McLaughlin refuses to criticise Keenan comments

The Sinn Fein chairman Mitchell McLaughlin has declined to criticise comments made on Sunday by leading republican Brian Keenan.

Keenan - not related to the former hostage of the same name - is the IRA's delegate to the arms body, and said that "the IRA's struggle would not be over until the British were removed from Ireland".

The UUP leader, David Trimble, has criticised the comments, saying they amounted to a defence of violence, but McLaughlin has responded by saying the words were not a threat.

First Minister David Trimble said the remarks seemed to "imply that the terrorist campaign may be resumed in the future".

He said: "The comments were a clear contradiction to the statement made by Gerry Adams on 1 September 1998, when he said that violence 'must be for all of us now a thing of the past, over, done with and gone".

It is clearly now up to the republican movement, by keeping the promises they made at Hillsborough in May 2000, to repudiate Mr Keenan."