IRA told disband before May election

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell yesterday demanded the IRA disband and end all criminality before the British general election on May 5 if the republican movement wants to enter the democratic process.

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams must insist that IRA ends criminality as well as abandoning the gun, said Mr McDowell.

“There will be no budge from the Irish Government if the Sinn Féin fudge continues - we must get categorical proof also that criminality is also over,” he said. Mr McDowell said he feared that Mr Adams’s call on the IRA to disband and embrace politics was an election stunt to secure the maximum number of nationalist votes in the upcoming elections in the North.