PROSPECTS for restoring power-sharing have been reduced by Sinn Féin’s “begrudging” attitude to policing, DUP leader Ian Paisley warned.

Two republicans who were being questioned after a couple were threatened by a drunken gang claiming to be from the IRA were tonight released without charge.

Republicans will face hard choices as they push ahead with their political plans and attempt to achieve a united Ireland, Gerry Adams said today.

A forum focusing on European issues was tonight told that they must first focus on a united Ireland before contemplating a united Europe.

The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, says he is optimistic about efforts to restore devolved government in the North.

Republicans are going to do everything they can to ensure that Northern Ireland has another peaceful summer, a Sinn Féin source insisted today.

Sinn Féin chairman Mitchel McLaughlin has insisted that republicans pose no threat to the peace process, despite the alleged involvement of the Provisional IRA in an attempted abduction in Belfast last Friday.

THE IRA has expressed deep concern after claiming the British Government had failed to deliver on commitments to the Northern Ireland peace process.

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly has said that interface violence is the greatest threat to the Irish peace process and not what unionists have described as a "moral dilemma" in sharing power with republicans.

Loyalists and republicans have blamed each other for rioting in east Belfast which left three people with gunshot wounds last night.

The husband of a woman killed in an IRA bomb has branded ‘‘offensive’’ a weekend commemoration in Dublin of republicans killed during the Troubles.

Three people arrested in connection with the raid on a high security Northern Ireland police station have been released without charge.