UVF ‘seeking to destroy rival loyalist group’

THE Ulster Volunteer Force appears hell-bent on driving out the rival terror group the Loyalist Volunteer Force, Ulster Unionist leader Reg Empey warned yesterday after the bloody feud claimed a third victim.

Following the murder of Stephen Paul in north Belfast on Saturday night, Mr Empey said the UVF, which has carried out all the murders, was not responding to requests to negotiate an end.

“This was another appalling murder,” the East Belfast Assembly member said. “But it has appeared for some time the UVF will not be budged. They see a certain parallel on what they are engaged in now and what the UDA [Ulster Defence Association] did with Johnny Adair’s faction in 2003. Their view is let’s get them out of the way.”

“I and others have appealed for mediation and I know there have been attempts at that but those initial contacts have had a negative response from the UVF.”

Mr Paul was shot dead and another man wounded around 5.40pm last night as they sat in a van in Wheatfield Crescent, off north Belfast’s Crumlin Road.

Police have asked members of the public to help them trace the movements of a small blue car which was seen in the Wheatfield area around the time of the murder.

The murder has been condemned by Northern Secretary Peter Hain and across the political divide.

Chief Superintendent Mike Little, the PSNI’s commander in north Belfast described the murder as a senseless attack.

DUP Assembly member Nelson McCausland and nationalist SDLP MLA Alban Maginness also called for an end to the violence.

Mr Empey said the days of masked gangs driving people out of housing estates and gunmen on the streets had to end.

“The irony is at a time when republicans are ostensibly making moves towards disarmament, the loyalists are using weapons in a feud,” he said.

“They must realise the irony in that and how that must make them look. We know after all these years that going around murdering people does not build the society that we all aspire to live in.”