SF 'must address IRA future to become credible'

Sinn Féin must address the future of the IRA if it is to bridge its huge credibility gap, the party was told today.

Democratic Unionist Assembly member Ian Paisley Junior said the party was wedded to the IRA and republicans were the only people who could address their credibility problem.

The North Antrim MLA argued: “Whenever we hear the excuse coming from Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy over the police raid on his party’s offices at Stormont in 2002, it is clear that Sinn Féin still have a considerable credibility gap to bridge.

“Every time the Republican Movement are implicated in an incident such as Stormontgate, they never admit their guilt. It’s always somebody else’s fault.

“Likewise, they never admit to the fact that it is the IRA and its existence and operations that are the key problem in Northern Ireland today.

“They and they alone can address the issues that need to be addressed.

“Only the IRA can end its paramilitarism, its criminal activity, its training, its targeting and its international escapades. No political party in the province can do this for them.

“They must come to the conclusion themselves that illegal activity in all its forms is unacceptable and the only way to advance an argument is via the ballot box and not the barrel of a gun.”

Mr Paisley was responding to Sinn Féin’s criticism of a Police Ombudsman report yesterday which found the raid on their party’s offices was not politically motivated.

Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan’s office was asked by Sinn Féin’s Assembly Group leader Conor Murphy to probe whether the raid, which occurred in front of television cameras and led to the suspension of the power-sharing executive, was designed to undermine power sharing and smear his party.

Mr Murphy, the Assembly member for Newry and Armagh, concluded the Ombudsman’s report had failed to tell the truth about what happened in October 2002.

“It has been claimed that no evidence has been found to prove that the Special Branch raid on Sinn Féin’s offices was politically motivated,” he said.

“However, it is difficult to see how this conclusion is reached when there is no reference to Operation Torsion, the Special Branch dirty tricks exercise which culminated in the Stormont raid.

“The Stormont raid on Sinn Féin’s parliamentary offices was planned and executed by an RUC cartel of political detectives, in the name of the PSNI.

“It was a politically-motivated raid with the clear intent to collapse the institutions and undermine the peace process.”

Sinn Féin and the DUP are preparing for crucial peace process negotiations next month, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Taoiseach Bertie Ahern hoping to revive power sharing.

But the DUP, which in last November’s Assembly Election replaced David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists as Northern Ireland’s largest party, insist the issue of the IRA’s future is crucial.

Mr Paisley said today: “The DUP is determined not to let Sinn Féin/IRA hold the country to ransom in the same way that the Ulster Unionist Party did.

“That’s why we have presented proposals which do not depend upon the good behaviour of the paramilitaries.

“Political progress here cannot wait forever for the penny to drop within the Republican Movement.”