Fanning the flames on burning bridges

Political Editor Harry McGee warns the fires from the IMC report may be uncontrollable

THE political aftermath of the Northern Bank robbery in late December has been like one of those dry-season bush fires that rage across California or Australia.

Just when you think it's all about to die down, there's another break-out in a new location and you find yourself facing another raging inferno.

So it was with yesterday's report from the International Monitoring Commission (IMC). There has been a week of relative calm following the edgy doom-laden rhetoric of Sinn Féin and the IRA last week. Taoiseach Bertie

Ahern had issued instruction to his ministers to dampen the tone of comments about the Provisional movement.

For days, it was widely known that the ad hoc report of the IMC was going to be hard-hitting it was going to come down like a "ton of bricks" on the Provos and Sinn Féin, a senior Government figure said earlier this week.

And that it did. That the IMC would make a conclusive finding even a hard one was not exactly the surprise of the century.

What made it into a conflagration yesterday was the incandescent response of Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams.

He not only raged against the IMC report ("rubbish" was his one-word dismissal) but also issued what he called a "challenge" to Bertie Ahern that sounded more like a full-blooded attack to thoseus who heard it.

One school of thought last night held that Adams unleashed his bile against Ahern as a ploy to distract from the findings of the report. But its findings, while strong, didn't really make any charge that had not been made before. In summary, it was: The raid was carried out by the Provos; it was sanctioned by its leadership; senior SF members, also members of the IRA, were involved in the sanctioning.

Adams's "challenge" to Ahern went way beyond that, another wounding snipe in a relationship that seems to be disintegrating before our eyes. It's a long time since we've heard anybody utter the phrase, "pan-nationalist front."

There was genuine anger in Adams's response yesterday and it seemed most of it was directed at what he saw as the IMC's appropriation of Ahern's belief that the SF leadership had foreknowledge of the raid.

Bluntly telling the Taoiseach to "put up or shut up", he repeated three time his "challenge" that the Taoiseach should arrest himself and Martin McGuinness for conspiracy to rob and for withholding evidence.

Of course, Adams is not naive enough to believe that action will ever follow the words. But it gave a powerful indication of the crisis that permeates the process at present. There is no calm, there is no reflection, there is no cooling of heels.

Of course, no other body sticks in Sinn Féin's craw like the IMC. Adams mocks it as a sop to unionists and a creature of both Governments. He venomously derided its four members yesterdays as "three spooks and a Lord".

The four members Lord Alderdice, former CIA deputy general Dick Kerry, former Department of Justice head Joe Brosnan and former Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police John Grieve firmly concluded that the raid was carried out by the Provos.

But it wasn't just a hollow reaffirmation of what the governments and the PSNI have said. They were at pains to point out that they relied on sources other than the PSNI. And what Grieve had to say at yesterday's news conference was highly persuasive.

"The material is as strong as anything I have ever seen," he said, insisting that the IMC had not just been "marking Hugh Orde's homework" but had used its own sources.

No other hypothesis was credible, he said.

The IMC is not a judicial body and there are clear political hues in some of its conclusions. For example, its assessment that Sinn Féin "appears at times to have its own definition of what constitutes a crime" could have been said by any politician over the past month.

There was even a bit of humour. It would recommend monetary sanctions, even though it was "paltry" when compared to the £26.5 million windfall from which the Provisional movement has recently benefited.

The Government's response yesterday was tempered, and that included the response of the usually fiery Michael McDowell, who reiterated the same points he had made during this week's two-day Dáil debate.

We are still in a period of deep instability. SF are in no mood for calm or

reflection and seem intent on calling the Government's bluff. And there may be attempts to force the Government's hand on naming those "household names" whose faces are to be found on both sides of the SF-IRA coin.

The IMC may well do the latter when its full report comes out at the end of next month. If that happens, we may well find ourselves in a situation where the bush fires can no longer be contained.