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01/29/06 10:23 EST

Several thousand people today took part in the annual Bloody Sunday commemoration march in Derry. The large crowd marked the 34th anniversary of the killing of 13 innocent civilians by members of the Parachute Regiment on January 30 1972.

It was expected to be the final march before the Bloody Sunday Inquiry team, headed by Lord Saville of Newdigate, reports the findings of its GBP£150 million hearing - the longest inquiry in British legal history.

Sinn Fein Assembly member Raymond McCartney warned that the people of Derry would settle for nothing but the truth of what happened that distant day.

Addressing the crowds, he said that when Lord Saville and his two colleagues report “they must keep in their minds one of the great lessons of Bloody Sunday that if the truth of that day is in anyway suppressed then the quest for the truth remains as fresh as it was all those years ago.”

Mr McCartney gave evidence to the Saville tribunal detailing how the events of Bloody Sunday prompted him to join the IRA and to take part in the Maze Prison hunger strike.

He said the the inquiry team: “It is up to them to place blame on those who are to blame and to place guilt on those who are guilty. The men shot dead that day, the men and women wounded that day - were deliberate acts - there is no escape from declaring that it was murder and attempted murder, no ifs, no buts.”

The Foyle MLA said he wanted to commend the families of those killed and the wounded for their “dignity, integrity and endurance on what has been a long journey in their campaign for justice and truth.”

One of Northern Ireland`s youngest politicians, SDLP Councillor Colum Eastwood, born 14 years after Bloody Sunday, said he marched in solidarity with the families and those injured.

“You stood tall for truth against the lies and cover-up of Widgery. You will stand only for full truth from Saville. In the face of provocation, insult and abuse, your dignity has shone through. Whatever may come in the time ahead, your cause will win through.”

The 20-year-old said his generation wanted to move forward and build an Ireland where conflict, division and despair would be the footnotes of a tragic history.

But, he said, to get to the future he wanted, the past had to be left behind on a moral basis, with no cover-ups and by putting victims and survivors first.

BreakingNews.ie
29/01/2006 - 18:03:14

Several thousand people have taken part in the annual Bloody Sunday commemoration march in Derry.

It marks the 34th anniversary of the killing of 13 innocent civilians by members of the Parachute Regiment.

It is expected to be the final march before the team investigating the event reports its findings.

This year, the parade remembered all the victims of the Troubles, including RUC officers and British soldiers.

BreakingNews.ie

29/01/2006 - 14:41:10

Two children were being treated in hospital today after a housefire which police suspect was started deliberately.

The four-year-old boy and his 15-month-old sister were asleep in their home at Colinview Street in the Edenderry area of West Belfast when the fire started in a wheelie bin at the rear of the house.

Police said the house filled with smoke and both the children and an uncle who was looking after them were overcome.

The alarm was raised by a passer by who saw the fire and called the Fire and Rescue Service.

They were all rescued from the house and taken to hospital for treatment for the effects of smoke inhalation, said a PSNI spokeswoman.

Sunday Independent

Unionists to seek Minister’s cooperation with investigations into unsolved murders

ALAN MURRAY

THE Minister for Justice has agreed to meet Unionist victims of IRA violence who will take part in a rally in Dublin next month.

Michael McDowell has agreed to open the doors of the Dail to relatives of victims of some of the worst IRA atrocities of the last 30 years immediately after the rally.

The Leinster House meeting will follow a parade from Parnell Square along O’Connell Street and Dawson Street on Saturday, February 25, for a rally outside the Dail.

Over 1,000 Unionists are expected to take part in the event which is being organised by groups representing victims of IRA violence across the North.

Families who lost loved ones in the Kingsmill massacre, the Shankill bombing and the La Mon massacre will be among those who will meet the Minister.

Mr McDowell confirmed the meeting in an email to the Democratic Unionist Party MP Jeffrey Donaldson last week after the pair discussed the parade and rally following a BBC Question Time programme.

Mr Donaldson said he appreciated the Minister’s gesture and hoped next month’s rally in Dublin would pass off peacefully and convey to the public in the south the extent of grief and suffering inflicted by the IRA.

“I am delighted the Minister has agreed to meet the relatives of IRA victims in Northern Ireland after the rally. They have very real concerns about IRA activity in the Republic and the need for the Irish government to cooperate with investigations into the large number of unsolved IRA murders that were planned and executed in the border area. That is the main issue we want to raise with Mr McDowell,” the MP said.

Willie Frazer from the Families Acting for Innocent Relatives group, who is one of the main organisers of the rally, said he expected that well over 1,000 people would travel to Dublin for the event.

“We want to restrict the numbers to around the 1,000 mark although I would imagine the number attending will be greater than that because of the interest expressed about the rally,” Frazer said.

Eight Loyalist bands from different parts of Northern Ireland will travel with the relatives and details are being worked out with gardai about where coaches can be safely parked near the assembly point in Parnell Square.

“Many more bands wanted to participate in the parade but we have restricted the number to eight and that should provide enough music and colour for the day. We do not want to bring Dublin to a standstill, or cause offence and we hope we will be allowed to walk peacefully in Dublin to convey the message about how our relatives died at the hands of the IRA,” the victims spokesman said.

Sunday Life

By John McGurk
29 January 2006

TWO MAJOR searches will be carried out by cops and the public today - as the bid to solve the mystery of missing man, Martin Kelly intensifies.

Air, land and sea sweeps of the Belfast docks and east of the city area will be carried out by specialist police teams, in the hunt to discover clues about the whereabouts of the 21-year-old barman.

Martin disappeared after leaving a pub in the Belfast docks’ area on New Years’ Night. Searches of the water near Pat’s Bar have, so far, yielded no clues.

Last night, Martin’s brother-in-law, Paul Kelly told Sunday Life that 25 PSNI officers, sniffer dogs, a helicopter and two boats would be involved in the search around the docks and lough shoreline this morning.

After that, a separate, Kelly family organised, public search will be carried out - from Sydenham to Martin’s home town.

Said Paul: “I think that we are coming to terms with the possibility that Martin may not now be found alive. But the family is also still holding on to that little bit of hope that he is alive somewhere.”

Paul added that the family of missing Ulster woman, Lisa Dorrian had pledged to take part in today’s search.

A total of 100 yellow balloons will be released as symbols of hope for Martin’s well-being - at a pre-search event in Barrow Square, adjacent to Pat’s Bar, at 12.30pm.

A PSNI spokesman confirmed last night that it is providing air support, boats and officers, as part of its ongoing investigation.

Sunday Life

UDA leaders say time for military wing to disband

29 January 2006

The UDA is set to announce that it is standing down it’s so-called military wing, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, loyalist sources have claimed.

Senior UDA figures in Belfast have held a series of meetings recently to discuss its future and an announcement is expected within a few months.

Sources claim a number of UDA brigadiers favoured the idea of disbanding the UFF immediately, in response to IRA’s announcement last summer that it was standing down its military units.

One loyalist source said: “Now the IRA threat has diminished some UDA brigadiers feel there is no longer a need for a military wing within the organisation.

“Although the internal debate is far from over, it seems certain the UFF will be stood down sooner rather than later.”

Other sources say many UDA commanders are admitting privately the loyalist paramilitary group’s days were numbered.

Recent successes by the PSNI and the Assets Recovery Agency had already put the squeeze on top UDA leaders in the Belfast area.

The organisation is also facing a period of intense scrutiny and surveillance from the intelligence services who have been charged with bringing an end to all loyalist paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland.

“By standing down the UFF they are hoping to buy themselves some time. However, the security forces are slowly winning the battle.

“Public opinion is also turning against the UDA and UVF and they are loosing support in their own areas.”

Sources also claim there is intense speculation in loyalist circles that a senior UDA figure and former close associate of deposed Shankill boss, Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair was about to be ‘outed’ as a intelligence services agent.

The man is still active within the UDA and is believed to have amassed considerable wealth through drugs and racketeering.

Sunday Life

‘If someone comes forward with crucial information…they will be a hero to us’
Murdered teenager’s family back Sunday Life

By Stephen Breen
29 January 2006

SUNDAY Life today offers a £10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers of Belfast schoolboy Thomas Devlin.

Thomas’s murder in a brutal knife attack six months ago sent shock waves throughout the community.

After careful consideration and in consultation with his parents and the police, we have offered the incentive in the hope that someone will come forward with the vital evidence needed to put the 15-year-old’s murderers behind bars.

The £10,000 will be paid for information that leads directly to the arrest and conviction of Thomas’s killers.

And any details on the murder that we receive at our office will be passed straight to the investigative team.

Police will today have officers available to take calls.

Anyone with information on the killing should ring the incident room on (028) 90700317 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.

Speaking to us from their home in Somerton Road, north Belfast, Thomas’s heartbroken mum and dad, Jim and Penny, told how they hoped the reward could help bring their son’s killers to justice.

Said Jim: “We hope the cash offer can persuade people who, until now, have been afraid to come forward with any kind of information.

“If the reward could maybe just prompt someone to tell police what they know about our son’s killing then it would be a worthwhile exercise.

“We will continue in our fight for justice for our son, but people have to remember the person who murdered Thomas will no doubt have the capacity to rob someone else of an innocent child.

“If this initiative leads to someone coming forward with crucial information, then they would always be a hero in our eyes.”

Added Thomas’s mum, Penny: “I hope and pray that the reward might just be enough to encourage someone to tell police what they know about my son’s killing.

“Anyone who can help put these people behind bars will be doing a great service to the people of north Belfast and also, to society at large.

“There are people out there who know who was responsible for killing an innocent child and almost killing another and I would ask them to think about the terrible consequences of such an evil act.

“The attack on my son was both brutal and vicious and people have to ask themselves if they want the people who did this walking the streets.

“The police have assured us this is a priority case and we are quite confident that we will see these evil men in court.”

The reward comes after the Belfast Royal Academy pupil’s parents appealed directly to the partners, friends and relatives of the brutal killers to also come forward.

The popular 15-year-old died in August, after he was stabbed five times in the back as he walked along Somerton Road in north Belfast with pals.

The teenager’s young friend was also seriously injured in the horrific and unprovoked attack.

Although a number of people were questioned about his murder, no one has been charged.

A number of searches have also been carried out in recent days in the Mount Vernon area of north Belfast as police step up their search for information.

It has also emerged that a police poster appealing for information on the killing was recently removed from the loyalist estate.

The prime suspects are two young men seen with a black and white dog.

Sunday Life

By Chris Anderson
29 January 2006

THE inquiry into the murder of LVF boss Billy Wright inside the Maze jail is to investigate events outside the prison after his death.

In a letter earlier this month, the inquiry’s solicitor, Henry Palin, confirmed the probe would examine events after ‘King Rat’ Wright’s murder as part of its investigation into allegations of state collusion in the killing.

Mr Palin wrote: “The inquiry is required to inquire into the death of Billy Wright to determine whether any wrongful act or omission by or within the prison authorities, or other state agencies facilitated his death, or whether attempts were made to do so, and whether any such act or omission was intentional or negligent.”

And Mr Palin said these issues were not confined to matters before the murder.

“All of the matters set out in the list of issues will be examined and events after Billy Wright’s death will be considered to the extent that any alleged act or omission could be seen as pointing to collusion.”

Mr Palin was responding to questions whether the Wright Inquiry would include the actions of the RUC, the coroner and prison officers during and after the 1999 inquest into the killing.

Wright’s father, David, has expressed serious concerns over a number of issues surrounding the inquest.

Meanwhile, solicitors acting for Mr Wright have applied to the High Court in Belfast for leave to apply for a judicial review of the Secretary of State Peter Hain’s decision to have the Wright Inquiry held under the 2005 Inquiries Act.

Mr Wright has also still to decide whether or not he will take part in the inquiry.

Sunday Life

Ex-Army officer says he can prove Garda/IRA contact

29 January 2006

A FORMER Army intelligence officer says he can prove allegations that a Garda officer was in regular contact with the IRA and passed sensitive information to the terrorists.

Martin Ingram says that, if he is allowed to assist the inquiry set up to investigate the murders of two senior RUC officers, he will corroborate the evidence of former IRA man ‘Kevin Fulton’, who claims he saw the former Garda officer meet with a senior figure in the organisation.

Justice Peter Smithwick is making preliminary arrangements for the inquiry into the 1989 murder of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan as they returned from a meeting at Dundalk Garda station.

Fulton told Canadian judge Peter Cory that he met the Garda officer when he travelled to a border location in the late 1980s with a senior IRA commander.

Fulton told the judge: “On one occasion in the late 1980s, I was with my senior IRA commander and another individual in my car. I knew the other individual to be Garda B.

“I was introduced to Garda B. I knew that Garda B, who was stationed at Dundalk, was passing information to the Provisional IRA.”

Fulton said that, after the Breen and Buchanan murders, another IRA man told his senior commander that Garda B had phoned the IRA to tell them that the officers were at the Dundalk station.

Ingram, who served as an intelligence officer with the Force Research Unit (FRU) from 1980 to 1984 and from 1987 to 1991, is currently gagged by the Ministry of Defence.

But the co-writer of Stakeknife: Britain’s Secret Agents in Ireland, told Sunday Life that, if Justice Smithwick felt his testimony was important to his inquiry, he would be prepared to give evidence - provided his legal difficulties with the MoD were overcome.

He said: “As a soldier, I was aware of a number of gardai who assisted the military and the RUC to check car numbers or addresses of terrorists living in the Republic and I have no intention of naming or identifying those officers. They helped in the fight against terrorism and saved lives.

“But there were a few gardai who worked for the other side, who I have no qualms about exposing and I became aware that Garda B was helping the IRA.

“I know that, because I saw intelligence documents about this garda.

“Freddie Scappatticci was meeting him regularly, because Freddie was both the second-in-command of the IRA’s internal security unit and also a member of the organisation’s general headquarters staff and liaised with Garda B to discuss more general matters.

“I will never divulge details of Garda officers who provided information to thwart terrorists and save lives, but I am fully prepared to out rogue police officers like Garda B and I can corroborate what Kevin Fulton says about this officer’s contacts with the Provisional IRA.”

Justice Smithwick recently met DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson in his Lagan Valley constituency to update him about the preparations for his inquiry.

The MP met the families of the two murdered officers earlier this month to brief them of the judge’s plans.

Guardian

Author forced into hiding condemns official blind eye to loyalist attacks

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday January 29, 2006
The Observer

Alison Mitchell reacts in panic as a man in a leather jacket looms outside her window. ‘Is the door locked?’ she calls to her husband, Gary. ‘Check if it is locked!’ she pleads as the figure approaches.

It is a tense moment, which dissipates only when the stranger is revealed to be a postman. Alison remains agitated - and with good reason. The couple have been living at a secret location in Northern Ireland since last November after their Belfast home was attacked by a mob incensed by the plays Gary Mitchell had written. His best known - the BBC drama As the Beast Sleeps, screened in 2001 - revealed how young Protestants were coping with life before and after the loyalist ceasefires. Local youths were not amused.

Now, in his first interview since the attack, Mitchell reveals what has happened to his family in the aftermath: their seven-year-old son, Harry, is so traumatised he spends most days in his bedroom and has had to take time off from school; Alison rarely goes beyond the door; and Gary cannot return to the house they still own on the northern outskirts of Belfast.

‘I was sitting in the living-room with my father watching Rangers play Porto live on television when it happened,’ Mitchell, a former playwright-in-residence at the National Theatre, says. ‘My wife heard noises, looked out and started screaming: “They’re attacking our car, they’re trying to get into the house.” She phoned the police and hid in the back of the house. By the time I got the front door open, they had already gone. They had pulled the car doors apart and thrown petrol bombs into it.’

On the same night the homes of Mitchell’s uncle and niece were attacked in Rathcoole, a stronghold of loyalist paramilitaries. Police estimate that 32 people took part in three co-ordinated attacks on the wider Mitchell family.

The Mitchells were attacked for two reasons: first, there has been growing resentment in Rathcoole about Gary’s exploration of Ulster loyalism and its identity crisis. Secondly, the loyalist paramilitary groups have begun to fragment.

Detectives have recently identified ‘rogue paramilitaries’ at Rathcoole - where Mitchell used to live - who don’t answer to either the Ulster Volunteer Force or Ulster Defence Association leadership. They deal in drugs, picket Catholic families trying to visit graves at nearby Carnmoney Cemetery, and killed a doorman at a north Belfast nightclub because he refused to let them sell cocaine and ecstasy on the premises.

Mitchell admits he has ‘history’ with some of this renegade gang. In 1997 when he won a Dublin-based award for new writing, he was branded a traitor. ‘They would stop you in the street, ask you what you were doing in Dublin and accuse you of selling out.’ The 40-year-old writer eventually left Rathcoole the next year, after a campaign of intimidation. He returned for his grandmother’s funeral in November. ‘They (the gang) sent a message that I was banned from Rathcoole and had defied them, but I never even knew there was a ban.’

After eight weeks of hiding Mitchell, who has been commissioned to write two new screenplays for Channel 4, finds it puzzling that his family’s plight has not become a national issue. ‘When I go over to work in London most of the people you meet, even after what has happened to us, say “Oh Gary, isn’t it lovely that you now have peace.” BBC Northern Ireland told me I wouldn’t be working with them any more unless I wrote about the peace process and it would have to be positive. So I told them, “No, you won’t be working with me.”How could I write a positive drama about the peace process when terrorists are blowing up my car?

‘As for England, you’re a second-class citizen if you don’t come from London or Metro-land. If I was a Muslim writer whose work upset members of my community so much that some were threatening to kill me, then it would be a cause celebre. There would be questions in parliament, writers would stage protests and Salman Rushdie would write letters of support. But because this is Northern Ireland what’s happening to my family isn’t part of the peace process narrative.’

Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, offered Mitchell and his family some comfort just before Christmas - an invite to a drinks reception at Hillsborough Castle. But the playwright says that the invite spectacularly backfired.

‘When we arrived at Hillsborough there were senior loyalist paramilitary figures drinking and eating in the same room. It was insensitive of the Northern Ireland Office to invite a family who were victims of loyalist intimidation to a function where loyalist leaders were in attendance.’

The Northern Ireland Office stressed there was never any intention of putting the Mitchells into a difficult situation.

BBC

Alan McBride’s wife and father-in-law died in the attack

A man who lost his wife in the Shankill Road IRA bombing has delivered the annual Bloody Sunday Memorial Lecture in Derry’s Guildhall.

Alan McBride was the first person from a unionist background to do so.

His wife Sharon, and father-in-law John Frizell, were among the nine people killed in the explosion in the fish shop in October 1993.

He said he thought the time “was now right” to accept the invitation and tell his story to people in the city.

“I’ve been on this journey now for 13 years, since Sharon was killed,” he said.

“I’ve come through a whole gamut of different experiences, emotions and feelings, and yet through it all the only thing that has really kept me going is my faith in the peace process and the possibility that one day we will have a country that is better than it was.”

Mr McBride said that while the bombers - Sean Kelly and Thomas Begley - were “totally responsible” for the carnage, to blame them, or people like them, for the entire Troubles “doesn’t fit”.

“At the end of the day we had a sectarian climate in this country for some time and I think that if people had been born elsewhere they may not have committed the atrocities that they committed,” he said.

Nine Protestants died in the 1993 IRA attack

Detailing his background, Mr McBride talked of being brought up within a loyalist housing estate, and the ‘normality’ of children getting involved in riots after school, collecting wood for the annual bonfire and going to school with paramilitary slogans painted on schoolbags.

He said he had invested heavily in the peace proces, “actively campaigning for a yes vote in the Good Friday Agreement”.

“However, I feel badly let down by politicians on both sides. It is almost eight years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and we still haven’t got an assembly - this is nothing short of shameful,” he said.

“This needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency without each side blaming the other in a process that goes round and round but delivers nothing.”

In the attack the two IRA men left a bomb in the Shankill Road fish shop.

Begley was also killed in the bombing - one of the most notorious atrocities of the Troubles.

Kelly was given nine life sentences but was released under the Good Friday Agreement in 2000.

The Northern Ireland secretary then ordered his re-arrest in June 2005 amid suspicions by security chiefs he had again become involved in terrorism.

He was released on the eve of the of the IRA’s ordering an end to its armed campaign one month later.

On 30 January 1972, 13 Catholics were killed when soldiers of a British paratroop regiment opened fire during a civil rights march in Derry.

The day became known as Bloody Sunday.

Sunday Independent

JIM CUSACK

FEARS of IRA plans to set up “community” policing groups in the Republic are believed to be behind the Government’s decision to push ahead with the controversial Garda voluntary reserve force.

Senior gardai and officials have been increasingly concerned at the setting up of a republican police force in the North - promoted and controlled by Sinn Fein.

The development has also alarmed the SDLP, which has already dubbed the vigilante groups as the “RA Specials” - after the old RUC reserve force, the B Specials, which were widely distrusted by Catholics.

The Government and the SDLP believe republicans are trying to ensure continued control of nationalist areas. Sinn Fein has consistently refused to support the new police force in the North, the PSNI, despite the implementation of huge reforms since the disbandment of the RUC.

Both the Government and the SDLP now believe the IRA and Sinn Fein will try and stop Catholics from co-operating with the PSNI. Sinn Fein tells people not to have anything to do with the PSNI but to report crimes to their local republican activists.

In the past year, these “community” policing initiatives - some under the guise of Community Restorative Justice schemes - have spread throughout Catholic areas of the North. The Government’s fear is that if Sinn Fein succeeds with this initiative in the North, it will then target working class areas of Dublin, and maybe elsewhere, in order to stamp its control on these communities.

According to Government sources, the new Garda reserve is being set up in the way that the Defence Forces’ reserve, the old FCA, was set up to stop young men being attracted into the IRA.

Ironically, one of the main concerns of regular gardai about the establishment of a voluntary reserve force is that it might easily be infiltrated by the IRA or organised criminals seeking access to sensitive Garda computer files.

The proposal to go ahead with the recruitment of some 900 volunteer part-timers this year was described as “ill thought-out” and “dangerous” by the president of the Garda Representative Association, Dermot O’Donnell.

“There is no doubt in the minds of very many gardai that this is a bad thing. It is very clear to us that subversives and criminals will use this is a way to infiltrate the Garda Siochana. There are very great dangers in this and we are very concerned, not just as an association but as servants of the State charged with the protection of itscitizens.

“We have a very elaborate system of checks and balances which are there to ensure that certain people do not get through the net. The present recruitment and training process enables the Garda to ensure recruits are of the highest character.

“The present training process takes 52 weeks, yet the new Act says that these reservists can be given full powers with only 24 hours’ training. The proposal to give people with such little training and almost no background checks the power to arrest with force is frightening.

“This will open the door for organised criminals and subversives and I’m sure they smell the opportunity already. It would be easy to infiltrate a reserve like this. There would be huge ramifications if that were to happen. The security of every citizen in this State is at stake.”

The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors has already dubbed the proposed reserve a “mad-hatter scheme”. President Joe Darwin said that, with little vetting and only 24 hours of training, reservists could have access to secret information on the Garda’s computers.

He said: “The minister was expecting ordinary citizens to get involved in the highly dangerous profession of policing, without reward.

“What will the minister say to the members of the reserve, and their families, when they come under attack - as they inevitably will - and there is serious injury or even death?

“How are members of the public going to react to being arrested by a part-time, pretend police person,” he asked.

“At present, fully trained members of the service, with years of experience behind them, find the job so difficult that they are retiring in large numbers - how will these part-time, voluntary people cope with the huge difficulties of the job. How will they deal with intravenous drug users, for instance?” the AGSI president said.

Sunday Times

29 January 2006

THE government is considering recalling the suspended Stormont assembly in late spring whether or not there is agreement between the parties on how to move forward, writes Liam Clarke.

This would give the local parties six weeks to form an administration or risk losing their salaries and allowances. If full executive power sharing was not agreed, the parties could opt for a voluntary coalition, or a legislative assembly in which executive functions are taken by British ministers or appointed officials.

Such an arrangement would need special legislation, but would be acceptable to the government if it was seen as temporary. Officials have indicated that the cut-off date would be May 2007, when new elections must be held for the assembly.

The strategy of setting a date for the assembly to meet has won the support of the Ulster Unionists, Sinn Fein and the SDLP. Although they differ in the details, the parties have urged the government to put the system to the test.

The British and Irish governments are bracing themselves for some negative political fallout from this week’s Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) report. It is expected to find that, although the security situation has improved markedly, the IRA and all other paramilitaries are still involved in organised crime. The DUP has already said that this rules out any hope of them forming an administration with Sinn Fein in the immediate future.

Attention is already switching to the next IMC report, due in April.

Sunday Times

Liam Clarke
January 29, 2006

LOYALIST decommissioning could happen within six to eight weeks, according to a senior UDA source. The organisation and its political wing, the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG), have been in contact with the British government in the past weeks and are hoping for a positive outcome.

“There have been eight meetings with the British government representatives since January 10,” said the source. “Everything is on the table and the pace of contact is increasing.” The UDA has also met General John de Chastelain’s decommissioning body within the past fortnight.

Sources say the organisation’s ruling inner council is seeking to cut all links with crime in return for “confidence building” investments by the government in loyalist areas. “Things are going smoothly; the inner council is isolating drug dealers and doing away with criminality,” said a source in the group.

It is understood that the UVF, the other major loyalist paramilitary group, is also in contact with the government. A spokesman could not be contacted.

A source close to the Loyalist Commission, an umbrella body that includes unionist politicians, Protestant churchmen and paramilitary representatives, said it was essential that the UDA and UVF maintained a co-ordinated approach. He believed that both will disarm within the same time frame in order to avoid feuding.

Tommy Kirkham, a spokesman for the UPRG, confirmed that everything including decommissioning and the standing down of the UDA was up for discussion in the talks with the government.

“I think it will come together in the next six to eight weeks,” he said. “There is a lot of dialogue going on and a lot of assurances being given but we haven’t got substantial agreement at this point in time.” It is understood that a wide range of options have been discussed as a part of a trade-off for the ending of loyalist paramilitary activity.

A loyalist source said: “There are things that the UDA want for their areas, not for themselves as individuals. We have been in dialogue for 2Å years but movement has been promised recently which pushes it all forward.”

This is believed to be a reference to the work of a special inter-departmental “delivery team” set up to address the needs of loyalist areas last October. The team is led by Nigel Hamilton, the head of the Northern Ireland civil service, who reports to David Hanson, the north’s political development minister. Membership includes senior officials from government departments and the Northern Ireland Office.

The team has increased its workload this month in parallel with offers from the loyalist paramilitaries to consider previously taboo subjects such as early decommissioning. A number of announcements are said to be imminent from the government and loyalists.

One British government source said: “Many people in paramilitary groups appear to be willing to recreate themselves as community activists. Time has moved on for them and, if they are genuine, it is right that we should respond and facilitate the transition.”

Loyalists also believe that appointing members of the Orange Order to the Parades Commission was an effort to create a “feelgood factor” in loyalist areas in the run-up to this year’s marching season.

Guardian

Henry McDonald
Sunday January 29, 2006
The Observer

The British government is preparing to fund ‘mini IRA dictatorships’ in Catholic areas of Northern Ireland as part of a move to restore devolution, the SDLP warned last night.

Alban Maginness, its justice spokesman, claimed a deal had been done between Sinn Fein and Downing Street to publicly finance ‘community restorative justice’ schemes in republican strongholds. The SDLP has called these ‘alternative paramilitary policing’.

Maginness made an eleventh-hour appeal to the Irish government to persuade Tony Blair to reverse the decision. ‘This deal means the British government are prepared to legitimise paramilitary policing in Catholic areas where the IRA holds sway.

‘It is absolutely appalling that the British would enter into such a deal with the IRA. The consequences for ordinary people will be very bad. They will be subjected to an alternative, IRA-backed policing force where human rights safeguards would not be adhered to. What you have are the establishment of mini-IRA dictatorships in Catholic areas, and the British government is about to give approval for this.’

Maginness called on the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and his government to oppose this ’secret deal’. ‘The Irish government is aware of our concerns on this issue, as we have made a very strong case. We hope that Dublin will intervene to prevent this happening. I think there is still time for this unsavoury deal between the British and the IRA to be stopped in its tracks. People should be entitled to proper policing, not paramilitary policing,’ he added. The normal protection of human rights and legal representation must prevail.

Concerns about the schemes have been highlighted in cases from Belfast to Derry, where families who have fallen foul of the local IRA complained of bias and arbitrary decisions, including expulsions from their homes.