US President, George W. Bush, has called Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to try 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 on Sunday Bush spoke to Adams, whose party is the political ally of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), from Air Force One as he travelled back to Washington after spending the Thanksgiving holiday on his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

“The president expressed his support for the peace process and the agreement proposed by (Prime Minister Tony) Blair and (Irish Prime Minister Bertie) Ahern,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

“The president called on Mr. Adams to help provide the leadership to move this process forward,” he told reporters.

Another White House official said later that the president urged both Adams and Protestant leader Ian Paisley, whom Bush spoke to on Friday, “to accept the proposed agreement on the table by Prime Minister Blair and Ahern.”

Sinn Fein, which has remained hostile to the mainly Protestant police despite reforms since a 1998 peace deal, said a delegation led by Adams would hold its first meeting with Chief Constable Hugh Orde at Blair’s London office Monday.

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

<B>Revival of home rule</B>

But at a time when Sinn Fein is being pushed to endorse the police as part of a wider deal to revive home rule in Belfast, it will be seen as carrying wider significance.

“Sinn Fein is meeting him (Orde) with Mr Blair in order to press the case for an end to the mi-litary occupation in republican heartlands and to test his commitment to bring this about,” said Sinn Fein chairman Mitchel McLaughlin. “There will be no discussion on policing issues.”

Bush contacted Paisley from his Texas ranch in an attempt to break a deadlock in the British-ruled province.

Britain and Ireland are trying to push Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) into agreeing to share power over the province with Sinn Fein – a previously unthinkable alliance.

Protestant unionists, who support British rule, and Catholic republicans, who want a united Ireland, are studying an Anglo-Irish peace plan to revive home rule.

London and Dublin say time is running out for an agreement and officials from all sides will meet again this week. Adams said Sunday he believed his Protestant rivals were ready to agree to a peace deal.

“I think he (Paisley) will do a deal,” Adams told BBC Television. “He wants to do a deal on his terms. He has to do a deal on terms that are acceptable to the rest of us,” he added.

Paisley said Friday his party needed to be assured that the IRA, which called a cease-fire in its war against British rule in 1998, had put down its weapons for good.

The DUP plans to meet retired Canadian General John de Chastelain, head of an international body overseeing guerrilla disarmament, yesterday, while Paisley, a 78-year-old hard-liner, meets Blair today.

Sectarian conflict costing 3,600 lives

Last week, Paisley raised a long list of questions about the Anglo-Irish peace plan. London has tried to answer them and Paisley will give his response Tuesday.

Power sharing was set up under the 1998 peace accord, which tried to end a three-decade political and sectarian conflict which cost more than 3,600 lives.

Bush has not carried on Clinton’s enthusiastic engagement in Northern Ireland, but Washington has played a low-key role in efforts to keep the process on track.

Violence has largely stopped in Northern Ireland but political stability has been elusive, with the vexed issue of the IRA and its guns dogging efforts to sustain power sharing.

Britain suspended home rule in October 2002 after allegations of IRA spying caused a final breakdown of trust.