Police chief blames IRA for 50 attacks.

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Police chief blames IRA for 50 attacks.
Wed, 03-03-2004 - 12:52pm

If old grievances can't be put to rest in Ireland I have little hope for peace in other, more volatile, places.


http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=469087&section=news


The Irish Republican Army (IRA) has remained deeply involved in low-level neighbourhood violence despite the ceasefire the Catholic paramilitary group called in 1997, Northern Ireland's police chief says.


As moderate Protestant leader David Trimble met Prime Minister Tony Blair in London on Wednesday to demand sanctions against the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, Hugh Orde said the IRA was behind more than 50 so-called punishment attacks in the past year.

"A couple of weeks ago I pointed out the (Protestant) UDA were still committing a large number of punishment beatings -- over 50 punishment beatings and shootings," Chief Constable Orde told a meeting of the Policing Board.

"On the other side of the divide, the Provisional IRA, without doubt, have also committed roughly a similar number of punishment beatings and shootings. We would attribute most republican beatings to the IRA rather than to dissident groups."

The latest crisis in Northern Ireland's stop-start political process blew up last month, when police blamed the IRA for the beating and attempted abduction of a leading republican dissident in central Belfast.

Protestant unionists -- who support Northern Ireland's political union with Britain -- seized on the incident as evidence mainstream republicans were not living up to pledges to pursue their goal of a united Ireland by peaceful means alone.

On Tuesday, Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists, walked out of talks aimed at reviving the power-sharing government at the heart of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

The home rule administration of majority Protestants and minority Catholics collapsed in October 2002 after another row over alleged IRA activity.

cl-Libraone~

 


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