Message to Sinn Fein

GERRY ADAMS will be meeting with Massachusetts congressmen today as he tours the United States in an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of Sinn Fein, the political party affiliated with the Irish Republican Army. The congressmen need to tell Adams that the IRA must disband and that Sinn Fein should cooperate with the reorganized Police Service of Northern Ireland.

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Adams, the Sinn Fein president, got the opposite message Monday at a banquet in New York. Patrick Lynch, president of the New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, said of the Police Service: ''I don't consider them police officers. They are soldiers who are trying to keep our people down for standing up for what is right."

Lynch might have had a point a decade ago, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary was overwhelmingly composed of Protestants who supported the union of Northern Ireland with Great Britain. The Police Service was established in 2002 to insure that law enforcement was evenhanded. Enrollment of Catholics has doubled in less than 10 years, but at 17 percent it is still far too low.

The chief roadblock to acceptance by Catholics is Sinn Fein's refusal to join either the Policing Board, which oversees the overall force, or the 26 district partnerships, which deal with local issues. The Sinn Fein boycott maintains the vigilante authority of the IRA within predominantly Catholic communities. The IRA would not have been able to launch a coverup of Robert McCartney's murder in Belfast without this malevolent power.

In less well-publicized crimes, the IRA routinely punishes anyone it considers a wrongdoer or a threat to its power. Protestant gunmen resort to the same violence, but they are not affiliated with a major political party.

Neither President Bush nor Senator Kennedy will talk to Adams this week. They are right to show displeasure at the McCartney coverup and purported IRA involvement in a bank robbery. The congressmen, however, do not symbolize the United States as Bush does or enjoy Kennedy's status as senior statesman of Irish America. Their meeting, organized by Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican, is appropriate if they take the opportunity to press Adams.

King says he plans to tell Adams that the IRA should disband. Indeed it should, but Adams often tries to distance Sinn Fein from IRA thugs. Joining the Policing Board, however, is something Sinn Fein can do on its own.

Sinn Fein is supposedly ready to join as part of a broader agreement, but acceptance of the Police Service should not have to wait on other issues. The Massachusetts congressmen at the meeting, Richard E. Neal, Martin T. Meehan, Michael E. Capuano, and perhaps William D. Delahunt, should tell Adams to end the vigilante-abetting boycott immediately.