Long overdue legislative action to break the suspected relationships between crime and politics is embodied in a document outlining a National Security Policy for Jamaica, tabled in the House of Representatives on Tuesday by Dr. Peter Phillips, the Minister of National Security.

The aim is to integrate the nation's major security concerns, and its timing is obviously a response to election campaigning in which the main problems facing the nation are being debated. Crime and national security are clearly high on the agenda.

The timing of projected legislation may well have been expedited by the recent exposure of what the United States authorities say was a terror plot to destroy the JFK International Airport in New York. Four West Indians (three Guyanese and a Trinidadian) have been implicated, giving a regional nexus to the American sensitivity about security matters in the aftermath of the episode of September 11, 2001.

The impact of that disaster, of course, has been international, ranging from war in Afghanistan and Iraq to domestic concerns touching our own vital economic prospects in air travel and tourism. The American so-called 'war on terror' is, of course, a direct fallout from 9/11; and until such events as the war in Iraq are concluded, there will be consequential effects for our relations with the U.S. After all, international terror, by definition, is not confined within national boundaries.

Thus, the National Security Policy proposals cover the need for a more effective system of criminal intelligence and forensic capability, even if 'terror' of the Mideast variety does not reach our shores.The potential of that happening was part of the preparation for Cricket World Cup, which was international in scope; yet, even without the terror, the debacle of the Woolmer case was surely a failed test of our capacity for forensic performance.

The more domestic considerations of the National Security Policy are the long suspected, unwholesome ties between politicians and criminals and community leaders of questionable character - to wit, the 'dons' of garrison fame.

In this connection, it is worth noting that there have been calls for greater circumspection of government contracts that might end up being of benefit to business interests with unsavoury ties.

In yesterday's edition of The Gleaner, the head of Operation Kingfish, Assistant Commissioner of Police Glenmore Hinds, was reported to have told a round-table talk on 'Guns, Gangs, and Governance' that criminal gangs in many instances were benefiting from government contacts. He went on to tell the round-table talk, organised by USAID in association with the Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean, that police action to deal with such linkages was hampered by lack of hard evidence.

That, of course, is not good enough. It is of a piece with the Minister of National Security bringing fundamental national security proposals which will require substantial legislation to Parliament so late in the final months of the current PNP administration.

It was the same minister who earlier in the current administration had frankly acknowledged to Parliament that there were unsavoury links between politics and crime.

It is long past time for such links to be broken.