THE Government secretly forged trade links with Libya in the 1970s, while privately acknowledging the north African state was arming the IRA.

ON Craigavon’s Ardowen housing estate, as a mother protested about police heavy handedness and youths taunted officers following the brutal slaying of one of their colleagues, it had the distinct feeling that the bad old days had returned to Northern Ireland.

BY any standards, the contribution to political life in Ireland over many decades by the late Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien has been both enormous and controversial.

NOW that the Provos have voted to recognise a British police force in the North, it raises some questions about what will happen in the future.

ARE we supposed to be grateful? Are we now supposed to flock in our thousands to vote for Sinn Féin? Are we supposed to acknowledge and accept what Martin McGuinness and others call this “truly historic moment”? Well, count me out.

THE IRA has forged an alliance with a network of criminal gangs in Britain in a multi-million euro cigarette and fuel smuggling racket, a former head of the Special Branch in Belfast claimed yesterday.

The brother of a Bloody Sunday victim today angrily denied an allegation that he passed on a threat from the Provisional IRA to a man forced to flee Derry.

The IRA was accused tonight of point scoring over the discovery of mother-of-ten Jean McConville’s body.

FBI agent David Rupert agreed to testify against alleged Real IRA mastermind Michael McKevitt only after watching a heart-rending TV documentary on the Omagh bomb atrocity, he claimed today.

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair was explicit about the assurances that the IRA have to give if The Good Friday Agreement is to progress at this stage.

IN THE foreword to Joe Cahill: A Life in the IRA (O’Brien Press, 25), Brendan Anderson explains that Cahill, a former chief of staff of the Provisional IRA, spoke to him “frankly about those things that he is free to speak about”.