SAOIRSE32

BBC

Six men have admitted being members of the UVF at the beginning of their trial in Belfast Crown Court.

The judge released them on bail pending completion of pre-sentence reports in June when they will be sentenced.

The men, from Counties Antrim and Armagh, were found wearing paramilitary uniforms when police raided a disused store in Monkstown three years ago.

Two other men admitted having guns and items related to the UVF in the store on the outskirts of Belfast.

The men had all originally denied being involved in the organisation.

They claimed they were members of a flute band, but when they appeared at Belfast Crown Court on Wednesday, all admitted the charge.

The men are Joseph Crawford from Fairway, Richard Morrow from Lynn Road, Dale Magill of Inverview Park, Ian Davidson from Waterfall Road and Philip Clarke from Cairngorm Drive, all Larne and John Rolston, from Alexander Crescent in Armagh.

Two others, Colin Greer from Ards Park in Monkstown and Robert Anderson from Chaine Memorial Road in Larne, pleaded guilty to having the guns and UVF items.

Daily Ireland

Apprentice Boys’ commitment

By Connla Young
26/04/2006

Tensions in a Co Antrim town were defused last night after an understanding was reached over the flying of nationalist and loyalist flags.
Daily Ireland first revealed last week that a number of Tricolours and loyalists flags erected throughout Ballymena had resulted in rising tensions in the town.
As part of a arrangement brokered late yesterday, members of the Apprentice Boys gave a commitment to remove a number of contentious loyalist flags erected last week around Our Lady’s Catholic Church in Harryville.
The church has been the scene of two loyalist blockades in the past decade. The flags around the building were expected to be removed last night.
A number of nationalist flags, including Tricolours and a starry plough, had been erected in the town’s Cushendall Road district but were removed by republicans on Monday night.
It is not yet clear if a batch of fresh loyalist flags erected in Ballymena on Tuesday night were included in the understanding reached yesterday.
Daily Ireland has learned that agreement on the vexed issue was scuppered last week after the Ulster Defence Association instructed the Apprentice Boys not to remove flags erected last week.
Sources close to the negotiations that led to yesterday’s understanding say further work is required before the flags issue will have been resolved totally.
“It’s still a work in progress and there is still work to be done. It’s an ongoing work, and mediators have been given the space and time to get the issue sorted,” said one source.
Ballymena republican spokesman Paddy Murray welcomed the flags compromise.
“Common sense has prevailed and all flags are being removed. If they want to talk about other flags, we are open to negotiations. We would prefer that there were no flags flying from lampposts anywhere. That’s what we will be working towards in the future,” he said.
Onlookers feared that the latest flag controversy to hit Ballymena had the potential to sink a historic deal brokered between nationalists and loyalists last year. Under the deal, loyalists promised to remove graffiti, flags and a UDA mural from around Our Lady’s Church in Harryville.
A loyalist mural in the area was replaced last month by an Ulster Scots mural.

Daily Ireland

by Ciarán Barnes
26/04/2006

A new junket row has engulfed the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) after it admitted using almost £50,000 (€72,000) of taxpayers’ money to fly officials on an all-expenses paid trip to the US for St Patrick’s Day.
A total of £41,259 (€60,000) was spent on travel costs, with a further £2,736 (€3,940) splashed out on top hotels, and £1,765 (€2,542) on car hire.
Four officials accompanied direct-rule secretary of state Peter Hain on the three-day Washington visit, including his private secretary and special adviser.
SDLP MLA John Dallat criticised the amount spent by the NIO on the US trip.
The East Derry politician is a former member of the Assembly Audit Committee, set up to monitor how public cash is spent. He said: “It is a bit rich for Peter Hain to lecture local politicians on public governance when he and his entourage are running up a bill like this.
“This annual NIO trip to America at St Patrick’s Day has become a junket.”
Mr Dallat said that during periods of direct-rule civil servants have been proven to take more trips abroad at the public’s expense.
“At least when the Assembly is up and running we were able to monitor these trips, but while the cat’s away the mice will play. When we do have devolved government again the issue of departmental tips abroad is something that is going to have to be seriously considered,” added Mr Dallat.
Speaking at Westminster, Mr Hain justified the US trip, giving details on his delegation attending a number of important events during their time in Washington.
“This [the events] included the Northern Ireland Bureau breakfast which showcases investment opportunities in Northern Ireland to US business,” said Mr Hain.
In March, Daily Ireland revealed the NIO had spent more than £2.2 million (€3.1 million) between August 2004 and February 2006 flying civil servants around the world. Politicians reacted angrily to the news denouncing the “jetsetting culture” they said exists within the department.

Sinn Féin

Published: 26 April, 2006

Sinn Féin Assembly member for North Belfast Gerry Kelly today said that the PSNI Special Branch have failed to answer the questions being widely posed about the involvement of a former RUC , Colin Breen, in the Sunday World exposure of Denis Donaldson’s home in Donegal.

Mr Kelly said:

“A recent article in the Sunday Business Post newspaper revealed that the man who led the Sunday World to Denis Donaldson’s home in Donegal and who secretly filmed him there was a former RUC member called Colin Breen. Shortly after the Sunday World exposure, Denis Donaldson was killed.

“In a BBC programme last night the involvement of the former RUC man in the exposure was again confirmed.

“Given the role played by Special Branch in Denis Donaldson’s life over the course of many years the revelation of the involvement of Colin Breen in this story is extremely sinister. It is clear that the PSNI Special Branch now have very serious questions to answer about their role in publicising Denis Donaldson’s whereabouts.” ENDS

Sinn Féin

Published: 26 April, 2006

Sinn Féin East Derry MLA Francie Brolly has challenged local SDLP MLA John Dallat to come clean over the party’s position on financial support for the Orange Order after that it emerged that despite Mr Dallat criticising the NI Events company for financially supporting the Orange Order that he along with SDLP colleagues on Coleraine Council voted to allocate £10,000 of ratepayers money towards local Orange Order events.

Mr Brolly said:

“When John Dallat says that it is inappropriate for the Events company to financially support Orange Order activities under the banner of tourism and that the money could be better spent elsewhere there is a certain amount of agreement between the SDLP and Sinn Fein.

“However, Mr Dallat cannot have his cake and eat it. It appears a little hypocritical to adopt this position in relation to the NI Events Company when John and his SDLP colleagues voted with the DUP and UUP on Coleraine Council to allocate 10,000 of ratepayers money to cover Orange Order ‘festival activities’ leading up to and including the 12 July.” ENDS

RTÉ

26 April 2006 12:25

500 jobs are to go in Belfast with the closure of the Prudential Insurance call centre.

The work of the call centre at the Clarendon Dock is to be transferred to England and India.

Prudential says the decision is part of the company’s cost cutting plan amounting to almost €60 million.

Belfast Telegraph

Report on terrorist activity is available on the internet the day before it’s released

By Steven Alexander
26 April 2006

**See>>IMC website

The latest report by Ulster’s terrorist watchdog was made available on the internet yesterday … a full day before its official publication.

The 10th report by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) is due to be published later today, but was discovered on the body’s website yesterday afternoon by a member of the public.

The man said he had been able to get hold of the full report simply by changing a single digit in the previous IMC report’s website address.

He said: “This is the second time I have been able to access IMC reports ahead of their publication - and it wasn’t hard to get.”

The caller to the Telegraph gave details on how anyone could obtain the information.

“In the address line of the link to each IMC report, there is a two digit number at the end,” he said.

“I had noticed that for each report, the number increased by one. So yesterday, I just clicked on the link to the ninth IMC report, and when the page popped up, I changed the ‘34′ to ‘35′ - and voila.

“So even though there is no link to the new report, it can still be easily accessed. For a security watchdog, the IMC’s website isn’t very secure.”

The report was also leaked last night on Northern Irish politics website Slugger O’Toole.

Mick Fealty, editor of the site, said: “One of our readers emailed me, and we have been able to publish details from the IMC report 12 hours ahead of the IMC.

“This also happened with the previous report, although we were only just over an hour ahead of the game last time.

“It just jumped into our lap again, and if someone else has been able to get it, it must be leaking all over the place.”

It is understood that the IMC report was only available online from yesterday.

No-one from the organisation was available for comment at its offices last night.

Belfast Telegraph

By Claire Regan
26 April 2006

A major study into the attitudes of 16-year-olds in Northern Ireland shows that cross-community activity and greater integration in education are vital to the building of a more stable and inclusive society, it was claimed today.

Duncan Morrow, chief executive of the Community Relations Council (CRC), said that the Young Life and Times Survey - published this morning as part of Community Relations Week - points to “significantly greater support for religious mixing”.

It also shows more favourable attitudes towards the other main religious community amongst young people who have taken part in cross-community activities or attended integrated schools, he said.

The Young Life and Times Survey is a major study that has been carried out by ARK, a research project managed jointly by Queen’s University and the University of Ulster, over the past three years.

According to its findings:

n 42% of Catholics questioned who had taken part in cross-community activity said they had a favourable attitude towards Protestants. Of those who hadn’t, only 33% said they had a favourable attitude.

41% of Protestants asked who had taken part in cross-community activity said they had a favourable attitude towards Catholics. Of those who hadn’t, only 26% said they had a favourable attitude.

46% of Catholics who had attended an integrated school had a favourable attitude toward Protestants. Of those who hadn’t, 39% said that they had a favourable attitude.

43% of Protestants who had attended an integrated school said they had a favourable attitude to Catholics. Only 36% of those who hadn’t, said they had a favourable attitude.

Mr Morrow said the findings provide further evidence “of what those of us working in community relations have always known: that participation in cross-community activities and greater integration in education are vital in terms of building a shared society that will benefit all of the citizens of Northern Ireland”.

“Without this activity, which is taking place largely unnoticed across Northern Ireland all year, CRC believes that we would end up with a permanently segregated, divided and distrustful society,” he said.

RTÉ

26 April 2006 11:38

The people of Ukraine are marking the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Click photo to view

In the capital, Kiev, President Victor Yushchenko placed a bouquet of roses at a memorial by the ‘Chernobyl church’, where survivors gather every year.

Hundreds of people, each bearing a candle and some with red carnations, filed slowly through the streets of Slavutych, the town built to house the Chernobyl plant’s workers after the accident.

At 1.23am local time (9.23pm Irish time), about the time of the explosion, a minute of silence was declared. A bell tolled and alarm sirens blared.

The explosion claimed thousands of lives and contaminated large swathes of territory in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia with nuclear fall-out also measured across much of western Europe.

It happened when a test involving Chernobyl’s cooling system went wrong. A power surge resulted in water from the cooling system turning to steam, blowing off the roof of the reactor.

A second explosion released 3% of the reactor’s radiation.

A soaring cloud spilled radioactive debris into the surrounding area and a radiation cloud drifted across half of Europe.

28 workers died in the immediate explosion; a further 19 died fighting the resultant fire.

Controversy continues over the ultimate death toll. The UN estimates the figure is 4,000, mainly through cancers, while Greenpeace claims the true death toll could be up to 100,000.

BN.ie

26/04/2006 - 10:34:08

The loyalist Ulster Defence Association’s involvement in criminality remains endemic, the Independent Monitoring Commission said today.

In its latest report on paramilitary groups, it said there had been little change in the past three months, with the organisation involved in shooting and assaults.

The IMC believed UDA members were responsible for the murder of a man in Co Antrim in February.

Thomas Hollran, 49, died in hospital days after being found lying an an alley in Carrickfergus, suffering from serious injuries.

It is believed he had been ordered to leave the town after a dispute with UDA members last year and was targeted when he took the train back on a Saturday night to visit a relative.

The IMC said it had no information that the leadership of the UDA sanctioned the death.

Nevertheless, the IMC painted a picture of an organisation mired in violence.

“The UDA continues to act violently, undertaking both shootings and assaults. The organisation aspires to arm and equip itself.

“The UDA’s heavy involvement in crime, including drug dealing and blackmail, continues and in some parts of the organisation criminality can be described as endemic,” said the report.

Despite the assessment, the IMC said it had found some positive signs and they continued to believe there were some people within the organisation who understood the futility as well as the unacceptability of continued criminality and the harm it inflicted on local communities.

It said it believed there were leading elements in the organisation who were continuing efforts to reduce criminality but efforts met with “a mixed success“.

The report added: “There are some tensions at the senior levels and the clear lead to stop targeting nationalists and ethnic minorities has not yet emerged.”

The assessment on the Ulster Volunteer Force was little better.

There had been a reduction of activity since the end of its feud with the rival Loyalist Volunteer Force but it was still operational.

It was responsible for a range of criminal activities, including violence, and continued to display behaviour “indicating that it intends to remain in paramilitary business“.

The UVF “undertook both shootings and assaults over the recent period. It continues to recruit new members throughout Northern Ireland“.

Weapons, explosives and other paramilitary equipment seized in Belfast in February belonged to the UVF, the IMC believed.

It added: “Crime is prevalent throughout the organisation.”

There had been some effort by elements of the UVF leadership to tackle criminality, said the report, and as with the UDA there were certain people who wanted to move away from criminality.

So far, though, there had not been a significant impact on the organisation as a whole. “We do not therefore change our overall assessment that the organisation is active, violent and ruthless.”

The recent statement from a spokesman that it did not intend to do more to improve the situation before November 24 – the deadline date for the establishment of a power-sharing executive at Stormont – was “not encouraging“.

On the dissident republican side, the Continuity IRA (CIRA) had been active during the three months covered by the report – on two occasions viable bombs were planted near police stations.

It was believed to be responsible for a device placed near the Belfast offices of the Probation Board in January and an unsuccessful device directed at the railway in Lurgan, Co Armagh, the same month.

The CIRA wished to remain an active paramilitary organisation, said the IMC. It “remains committed to terrorism“, and had been the most active of dissident groups.

Over the period under examination, it “continued efforts to recruit and train members; it monitored possibilities for attacks; and it aspired to further arm and equip itself“.

The Irish National Liberation Army remained much as it had in the previous report – continuing a low but potentially serious level of activity and remaining involved in organised crime, including drugs and smuggling.

It aspired to do more and continued efforts to recruit and to exert control over communities.

It was believed to have been behind a major robbery from the Ulster Bank in Belfast in February, and robberies in Strabane and Sion Mills the month before.

Irish Independent

THE IRA has been given its cleanest bill of health yet on paramilitary violence and criminality by the International Monitoring Commission (IMC).

The four-member body says in its latest report, to be published today, that it is not aware of any “terrorist, paramilitary or violent activity” which has been sanctioned by the Provisional leadership.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will hail the report this morning as a significant fillip for their hopes of restoring the Northern institutions after almost four years.

But the document does not come to conclusions on the murder in Donegal last month of self-confessed British spy and former top Sinn Fein official Denis Donaldson or the big vodka heist in Dunshaughlin.

The period covered by the report did not include those two incidents.

So a final green light will have to await the next report.

That is expected in October, just weeks before the November 24 deadline set by the two governments.

Only a full and final clean sheet then would entice in the DUP into major talks with Sinn Fein on the question of power sharing and restoring the Northern Assembly, now suspended for almost four years. But a Government spokeswoman said last night that today’s report - the tenth from the IMC for the period from September 1 to February 28 - was “positive” and being seen as a major boost for the peace process.

The hope in both governments is that it will contribute significantly to the improved political climate in the North at present.

The atmosphere of hope was improved greatly by the decision of DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson and other senior party members to end the 16-year boycott of the British-Irish InterParliamentary Body and attend its session in Killarney.

The report says it remains “our clear view that the Provisional IRA leadership has committed itself to following a peaceful path”.

It adds that the leadership “has expended considerable effort to re-focus the movement in support of its objective”.

The overall assessment the IMC gives is of a complete absence of terrorist or activity involving violence.

“We are not aware of current, terrorist, paramilitary or violent activity sanctioned by the leadership.”

“We have had no indication in the last three months of of training, engineering activity, recent recruitment or targeting for the purposes of attack.”

The report also notes a “substantial erosion in the Provisional IRA’s capacity to return to a military campaign without a significant period of build-up, which in any event we do not believe that they have any intention of doing”.

Gene McKenna