Bush asks Sinn Fein chief to back N. Ireland peace plan

LONDON -- President Bush called Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams yesterday to help clinch a peace deal in Northern Ireland, as the party said it would hold unprecedented talks with the province's police chief.

The White House said Bush spoke to Adams, whose party is the political ally of the Irish Republican Army, from Air Force One as he returned to Washington after spending Thanksgiving on his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

"The president expressed his support for the peace process and the agreement" proposed by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"The president called on Mr. Adams to help provide the leadership to move this process forward," McClellan said.

Later, Sinn Fein said a delegation led by Adams will hold its first meeting with Chief Constable Hugh Orde at Blair's London office today. The party has remained hostile to the police, who are mainly Protestant, despite changes since a 1998 peace deal.

Sinn Fein said the meeting would focus on its demands for scaling back security in the IRA's Catholic heartlands, where police stations resemble forts and British Army posts dot the landscape.

"Sinn Fein is meeting [Orde] with Mr. Blair in order to press the case for an end to the military occupation in republican heartlands and to test his commitment to bring this about," said Sinn Fein's chairman, Mitchel McLaughlin. "There will be no discussion on policing issues."