All four members of the North's ceasefire watchdog, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC), were today urged to quit after one of them stood down from a political party.

NORTHERN Secretary Pater Hain last night moved to downplay the row over whether the IRA had held on to weapons, insisting it was not possible to account for every single gun.

John Alderdice, former speaker in the Northern Ireland Assembly, today won a court victory over newspaper allegations that he abandoned his post during a developing crisis in the peace process to buy a holiday home in France.

Former Northern Ireland Assembly speaker John Alderdice launched a legal action today against newspaper allegations that he vanished to buy a holiday home in France amid a deepening crisis in the peace process.

BRITISH troop levels in the North are three times higher than the peacetime target, a watchdog body confirmed yesterday.

British government moves to fine Sinn Féin over continued paramilitary activity by the IRA are to be challenged in the courts, the party said today.

Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness ended a two-and-a-half-day visit to South Africa by paying tribute to the role of the African National Congress government in encouraging parties in Northern Ireland.

THE International Monitoring Committee is to write to members of political parties who they believed to be in senior positions within paramilitary groups to tell them that they intended naming them.

SENIOR Sinn Féin politicians face the prospect of being publicly outed as leading members of the IRA by the International Monitoring Commission.

The British government will reveal today if it would impose financial punishments on Sinn Féin for alleged IRA ceasefire breaches.

A FOUR-MEMBER independent commission set up to monitor paramilitary activity said yesterday it is considering issuing a report specifically on the attempted abduction of dissident republican Bobby Tohill in Belfast.

The Speaker of the Northern Assembly, John Alderdice, has announced his intention to retire at the end of this month.