The untouched cap of Policewoman Yvonne Fletcher, still lying in the road outside the Libyan People╒s Bureau where she fell fatally wounded on Tuesday morning, was a stark illustration yesterday of the operational constraints under which the police are having to handle the tense situation in St James╒s Square.
Equally revealing is the reluctance of senior officers at the scene to refer to their operation as a ╥siege╙, although the sealing off and evacuation of the West End square and the bureau╒s encirclement by armed police amounts to precisely that.
Members of the Metropolitan Police╒s ╥Blue Berets╙ ╤ the sharpshooters and weaponry experts of the D 11 section ╤ were among the first to take up sniper vantage positions in the square. Some of them are armed with the controversial new police-issue machine gun, the Heckler and Koch MP5 K, which fires 900 rounds a minute.
They are backed up by police marksmen from the Diplomatic Protection Group and the Anti-terrorist Squad and although senior officers refuse to confirm it, a 12-man SAS squad is thought to be standing by.
Immediately, however, the police operation under the overall command of Deputy Assistant Edgar Maybanks, in whose metropolitan division the crisis has arisen, is concerned with the delicate task of maintaining stability in dealings with the occupants of the bureau while negotiations are carried on at diplomatic level.
The police╒s verbal circumspection, as much as their physical caution, is an indication of the minor, albeit crucial role, they are performing in the resolution of the drama. Questions from journalists about the diplomatic status of the occupants, their immunity from prosecution or what demands they have yet made have been side-stepped by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Richard Wells, the director of information at Scotland Yard.
Their own priority in the negotiations to date has been to sustain the communication (by a direct telephone line) which they have established with those inside the bureau and to nurture carefully whatever trust already exists between them.
At this level the answering of requests, the collection and delivery of food and cigarettes and the relaying of messages is a vital foundation for the exchange of diplomatic positions between London and Tripoli.
Although the police have also declined to say whether the Libyans are still able to contact their government in Tripoli, the link is almost certainly intact. Radio and Telex traffic between the two would provide information on the occupants╒ disposition and what pressures they are under ╤ information too instructive to sever.
Such information will be an important influence on the decision-making in Cobra, the emergency committee of ministers, senior government officials and police officers which is being chaired by Mr Leon Brittan, the Home Secretary, and which reports directly to the Prime Minister. It is this committee which is choosing the tone and the pace of negotiations on the ground with the Libyan bureau occupants.
The police have, of course, one final and more important constraint on their actions: the siege taking place at the British Embassy in Tripoli.
