Who can crack the IRA's code?

SWANNING around Northern Ireland gives you a different perspective on life there. Near Lambeg, I saw the Israeli flag fluttering alongside the Red Hand of Ulster and the Union Jack. In the nationalist side of Portadown, the graffiti feted the Palestinians.

Surreal or what?

And rumour has it that Republicans breached British intelligence in Castlereagh, not for any subversive or sinister motives, but to find the missing wheel for their cloned Enigma encoding machine, which would help them to translate the IRA's recent statements into the Queen's English. So far the results have been mixed:

(a) eht raw si revo

(b)Thæ wa® is ver

(c) The war is **er

Anyone smart enough to figure out the last four ciphers will have solved the last piece of the jigsaw. Risteárd Ó Dublainn,

Sráid Coote,

Maighean Ratha,

Co Laoighis.