THE Rev Ian Paisley, the Democratic Unionist leader, is to have a historic meeting with Archbishop Sean Brady, the leader of the Catholic church in Ireland, next week in Stormont.

Paisley will tell the archbishop he is prepared to share power with Catholics, in the right circumstances, and he will ask Brady to press Sinn Fein to support the police. The meeting is part of a DUP strategy to press Sinn Fein to back the PSNI.

It will be the first time Paisley has met a leader of the Catholic church in Ireland. His last high-profile encounter with a Catholic dignitary was when he heckled Pope John Paul II in the European parliament in 1988. Paisley shouted: “I denounce you Antichrist! I refuse you as Christ’s enemy and Antichrist with all your false doctrine,” before being ejected from the chamber.

But a meeting with the archbishop, who Paisley refers to as “the Pope’s representative in Ireland”, now suits the DUP leader’s political agenda and he will be asking Brady to use his influence in the nationalist community to help him.

Other DUP delegates at the meeting are likely to be the MPs Gregory Campbell and Nigel Dodds, and Peter Robinson, the deputy leader.

Campbell said the meeting was one of a series with church leaders and has been planned since June 2005, when he wrote to Brady suggesting talks. “There was informal contact since then while we ironed out the details,” the MP said.

“We will give him reassurance on our commitment to power sharing if he requires it. We will ask him if he thinks any stable government in Northern Ireland or anywhere else could be established if one of the main partners in the government of the day declined to support law and order or the police service.

“We will make it clear that if he can do anything to ensure his community are 100% behind the police then that would be progress.”

Later next week, Paisley will meet Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and the main Northern Ireland parties for intensive talks aimed at restoring a power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland.

The British and Irish governments have said that if agreement is not reached by November 24, they will close Stormont and abandon power sharing for the foreseeable future. Paisley has said the deadline is unlikely to be met.

His meeting with Brady is expected to win the DUP leader some points in the run-up to talks. Some DUP sources believe the party will also talk directly to Sinn Fein before November 24, something they have so far refused to to do, in a further effort to show that progress is being made.

The delicate diplomacy between the DUP and the Catholic church began following a speech Brady made at a function hosted by Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador to Italy, in Milan last year.

The archbishop said he would like to see power sharing in Northern Ireland and that it was his fervent wish to meet DUP ministers in a partnership government.

Paisley will be open to charges of double standards because, as recently as 2004, he condemned Dr Ken Newell, the then moderator of the Presbyterian church in Ireland, for inviting Brady to attend the Presbyterian general assembly as a guest.

Accusing Brady of “apostasy”, Paisley asked: “Should a man who abominably injures Christ be welcomed by the general assembly?” He said the invitation was “an act of treason to the Lord Jesus Christ and a declaration of perjury of Dr Newell’s ordination oath”.

Another issue that will emerge this week is the discovery of the fingerprints of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, on a car used in the 1971 murder of two RUC officers. The prints were found using forensic methods not available at the time.

On Thursday, Ian Paisley Jr, the DUP’s justice spokesman, will ask Sir Hugh Orde, the chief constable of the PSNI, why Adams has not been questioned and whether he has been invited to help with the inquiry.

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