IRA 'will not accept unrealistic disbandment demands'

The IRA 'will not accept unrealistic demands' for its disbandment, a senior source in the organisation claimed today.

In a blunt response to Tony Blair’s call for the group to stand down, the source denied the Provisional IRA was “a threat to the peace process“.

Just five days after the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive over claims that republicans operated a spy ring at the Government’s offices in Belfast, the source said: “There is considerable concern within the IRA at recent developments.

“There is also real anger at the attempt to present the IRA as a threat to the peace process.

“The IRA is not a threat to the process and will not accept the imposition of unrealistic demands.”

The source was responding to British prime minister Tony Blair’s warning that the IRA’s continued existence was undermining the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr Blair told republicans in a keynote speech in Belfast on Thursday they had reached “a fork in the road” where they had to choose between pursuing politics exclusively or paramilitarism.

“There is no parallel track left. The fork in the road has finally come,” the prime minister insisted.

“Whatever guarantees we need to give that we will implement the Agreement, we will.

“Whatever commitment to the end we all want to see, of a normalised Northern Ireland, I will make. But we cannot carry on with the IRA half in, half out of this process – not just because it isn’t right any more, it won’t work any more.

“Remove the threat of violence and the peace process is on an unstoppable path.”

Northern Ireland’s peace process has been dogged by persistent allegations over the past year of continuing IRA activity.

In August 2001, the arrest of three IRA suspects in Colombia, whose trial is now beginning, alarmed unionists.

The three prisoners – Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley – are accused of training left wing FARC rebels in Colombia.

The IRA has also been accused of the break-in and theft of sensitive Special Branch documents from the top security Castlereagh police station on St Patrick’s Night in March.

During the summer, police chiefs alleged the IRA had, along with loyalist paramilitaries, been involved in street disturbances along the peacelines in north and east Belfast.

However the arrest of four people this month for allegedly operating a spy ring at Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid’s office and the subsequent high profile raid on Sinn Fein’s offices at Stormont put immediate pressure on the Government to table a motion in the Assembly for the expulsion of the party’s two ministers from the power-sharing executive.

Two Democratic Unionist ministers resigned from the power-sharing government and David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists also threatened to pull out if the Government did not expel Sinn Fein.

However in a bid to save the Good Friday Agreement, the British government suspended devolution in the province at midnight on Monday and brought back direct rule from Westminster.

In the wake of suspension, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern and Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble have all called on republicans to demonstrate the disbandment of the IRA was well under way.

However republicans have denied all allegations of wrongdoing and denounced the suspension of the political institutions – claiming it is only by making politics work that paramilitarism will fade away.