British government to be pressed on spy claims

THE British government will come under intense pressure today to say if its intelligence services were operating a spy ring in Stormont.

Following what Taoiseach Bertie Ahern described as the “bizarre” revelation that senior republican Denis Donaldson was a British agent for 20 years, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern and Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams will hold separate meetings with Northern secretary Peter Hain in Belfast about the claims.

The meetings come in the wake of calls from all main nationalist and unionist parties in the North for an enquiry on the so-called Stormontgate affair.