All crime must end, says Hain

BRITAIN’S North Secretary Peter Hain said yesterday the IRA must not just give up bombs and bullets but must shut down everything, including beatings, criminality, targeting and the robbing of banks.

Mr Hain accepted the IRA had broken its word before and insisted all violence and crime had to end. The £26.5 million Northern Bank heist in Belfast and the killing of Robert McCartney outside a city centre bar has fuelled Unionist scepticism about whether the IRA will keep their word.

But with General John de Chastelain’s international disarmament body on standby to examine decommissioning and the Independent Monitoring Commission assessing its ceasefire, Mr Hain said every move would be studied.