The Hindu : International : IRA still active, says report

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Friday, May 27, 2005

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International

IRA still active, says report

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: Attempts to revive the stalled Northern Ireland peace process have run into more complications after a report of the Independent Monitoring Commission said that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was still recruiting new members and remained a "heavily active organisation''.

The Commission, which monitors the activities of various paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, said the IRA continued to recruit new members and train them "in the use of firearms and explosives''.

It also reported that the IRA was heavily involved in criminal activities such as money laundering and tobacco smuggling, and suggested that the IRA men might have been involved in the brutal murder of Robert McCartney, a Belfast resident, whose sisters are leading an international campaign for his murderers to be brought to book. The report was seen as a setback for IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, whose president Gerry Adams recently urged the IRA to abandon the armed struggle so that democratic political institutions in the province to be revived.

The Northern Ireland administration remains in a limbo as hardline Unionists refuse to share power with Sinn Fein insisting that the IRA must first disband.

They called the report a "damning indictment'' of the Republican movement.

"Anyone who thinks that Sinn Fein can be brought into government any time soon should read this report in detail and see just how deeply ingrained in the Provisional movement the whole litany of paramilitary and criminal activity is,'' said a leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the largest unionist group in the Provincial Assembly.

The British Government reacted cautiously with the Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain saying that he would consider the report carefully. The Sinn Fein questioned the credibility of the Commission's findings claiming that they were "neither impartial, fair, nor balanced''.

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