Choice of G8 venue a massive gamble

Security in the North will be tight for the summit as speculation of threats intensifies, writes Conor Humphries

BRITISH prime minister David Cameron is gambling that the remnants of the IRA are too weak to trouble the world’s most powerful leaders when they meet five miles from the scene of one of the worst killings in Northern Ireland’s recent history.

Cameron’s government has chosen the luxury Lough Erne resort in Co Fermanagh, a secluded lakeside hotel near Enniskillen, to host American President Barack Obama and his Group of Eight colleagues at a summit next week, banking on its remote location to deter anti-globalists, Islamists and any other potential trouble-makers.

In doing so, he is running a calculated risk that dissidents who do not accept the IRA’s 1998 peace agreement with Britain will be unable to trouble Northern Ireland’s experienced security forces.

“In some ways it’s more manageable. In some ways it’s more of a gamble,” said John Bew, a security expert at King’s College London. “It’s a golden opportunity (for the dissidents) in terrain they know very well.”

Enniskillen, like Northern Ireland, has been transformed since an IRA bomb tore through a crowd of mainly Protestant Unionists laying wreaths to Britain’s war dead in 1987, killing 11 and wounding 63.

The civilian deaths rocked support among Catholics for the IRA and pushed its leaders towards dialogue with Unionists.

Today, “Fermanagh Welcomes You” signs have replaced machine gun turrets on the border, which surrounds the town on three sides.

“There’s no way they could have done this 20 years ago. But today it (Northern Ireland) is safer than the rest of the UK,” said Colin Whyte, a 43-year-old builder, walking past the site of the bomb which injured several of his relatives.

But fears that a network of a few hundred militant nationalists could target the town once again were realised in March when bomb disposal experts defused a device containing 60kg of homemade explosive.

The groups have a much lower level of technical sophistication and support in the community than the Provisional IRA, which had around 1,500 active members at its peak.

The PSNI last year said the threat from the dissidents is at its highest level since the ceasefire with a threat level of “severe” compared to the lower “substantial” level for international terrorism.

Justice Minister David Ford said last month it would be foolish not to plan for the potential of significant trouble, and police have made a number of arrests in recent weeks and on Monday seized a cache of weapons.

Ireland is to put 900 police on duty, setting up eight check- points to seal the border and the government recently approved new rules to allow the blockage of phone signals in case of emergency.

Security analysts said the dissidents would be unlikely to attack the venue itself. Instead, they may repeat attempts in recent months to detonate a car bomb elsewhere in the North, attack a police station or target one of the 3,600 officers being brought from Britain to help protect the event.

“You would assume that is what they are planning,” said Peter Shirlow, an expert in Republican violence at Queen’s University in Belfast. “They have so little support that the only way they can get recognition is by creating a media event. That’s why they are so dangerous.”

Raymond McKenzie, who runs an architectural salvage business near the security fence, said: “In the circumstances of a recession, it should be more a plus than a minus... I’m intending to set up a burger joint for the protesters and I’ll stick up two white flags for peace.”