Paisley: IRA bank raid has shattered trust
Republicans must spend “many months” rebuilding trust shattered by the IRA’s Northern Bank robbery before new any new Ulster peace talks, Ian Paisley warned tonight.
The Democratic Unionist leader emerged from meeting Chief Constable Hugh Orde more convinced than ever that the Provisionals pulled off the £26.5 million heist.
Mr Paisley insisted a fresh attempt to broker a power-sharing agreement with Sinn Fein until cast-iron guarantees are given that all paramilitary guns and crime operations are scrapped for good.
He declared: “There was a golden opportunity which they refused.
“Maybe they saw the gold of the Northern Bank was more precious than the gold of the Assembly.”
The raid, on December 20, the biggest of its kind in British history, came just after a major push to revive the devolved administration at Stormont came agonisingly close to success.
London and Dublin believed they had a deal that would see unionists and republicans work run an Executive together at the Northern Ireland Assembly.
But the plan was derailed at the eleventh hour amid IRA resistance to DUP demands requiring photographic proof they had destroyed all their weapons.
Even though republicans have categorically rejected Mr Orde’s view that the Provos cleared the vaults at the Northern’s Belfast HQ, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern have accepted his assessment.
Their fury was compounded by the belief that the robbery was being planned at the same time the political negotiations involving Sinn Fein leaders were at a critical stage.
Mr Paisley stressed the Chief Constable had given him no confidential intelligence during their meeting at police headquarters in Belfast.
But he insisted: “He is absolutely convinced this was a Provisional IRA operation and I trust him.
“He has put his whole future as a policeman on the line. This is based on intelligence he has and been confirmed by the Gardai.
“It has also been strongly stated by both the Taoiseach and Michael McDowell, the Minister for Justice in the South.
“I don’t think that sort of round the clock support would be wrong.”
The North Antrim MP added: “I feel very strongly that all the time we were doing our negotiations there was an unreality about the IRA/Sinn Féin.
“There was something that said to me they are not going to agree and only going a certain way, then they will cut the ropes and continue out on their own.
“The position is that we cannot (now) deal with IRA/Sinn Féin until they decommission their weapons and give up criminality.
“There’s no chance of a deal until the IRA are brought to heel and made amenable to the law.
“Seeing is believing that they are going, all criminality must cease, and the people of Northern Ireland must be convinced that they have ceased.
“That will take more than one month to convince us. I would say it will take many months.”
