SAOIRSE32

canada.com

Lee Berthiaume
The Ottawa Citizen; with files from the Canadian Press
Sunday, June 04, 2006

The three tonnes of ammonium nitrate police seized in Friday’s terror raids posed a “real and serious” threat, but the substance is still readily available as a fertilizer.

Police said the arrests foiled a series of terrorist attacks that could have caused catastrophic damage.

One tonne of ammonium nitrate was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which destroyed a federal building and left 168 dead.

“The quantity, of course, is alarming; it’s quite astonishing,” David Harris, a former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said yesterday of the Toronto seizure.

“It seems to suggest an almost rabid dedication to undertake something serious, whether as a major catastrophic explosion or a series of devastating assaults.”

Federal government regulations to make it more difficult to acquire bomb-making substances are on the way, but ammonium nitrate as a fertilizer is still readily available.

“It’s a fairly ubiquitous substance,” said Phil Lightfoot, manager of the explosives research laboratory at Natural Resources Canada. “It is widely used and relatively easy to acquire.”

Mr. Lightfoot said recent changes to the Explosives Act have allowed for the control of substances that can be used to create bombs, and government officials are in the process of writing regulations on the control of ammonium nitrate.

The new regulations will require the vendor to know a buyer personally, or obtain identification, and keep written records of all sales.

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate are produced at chemical plants in Canada each year, Mr. Lightfoot said.

Wade Deisman, director of the national security working group at the University of Ottawa, said changing regulations for ammonium nitrate will help in the short term, but terrorists and others will find something else to use to build bombs.

“As a stop-gap measure, it is a good measure,” he said. “But right now we’re talking about the most available (substance) and then they’re going to move on to the second-most available. All it takes is a little imagination.”

Besides the Oklahoma City bombing, ammonium nitrate has been linked to other terrorist attacks and plots. The Irish Republican Army used the substance in many bombings, and it was identified as the main ingredient used in the Bali bombings in Indonesia in 2002, which killed 202 people.

Eric Brooks, owner of Eco Landscaping Brookside Gardens nursery, said ammonium nitrate is still available in large bags from farming suppliers around the province, but most nurseries and hardware stores no longer sell it for home use because new fertilizers have been made available.

BN.ie

04/06/2006 - 16:03:03

Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan, who was murdered in Iraq, died because the British government refused to speak to her kidnappers, her family claimed today.

The Care International worker was taken hostage in October 2004 and killed just under a month later. Her body has never been found.

Today her family said that during her captivity four calls were made to her Iraqi husband Tahseen in Baghdad from the kidnappers, demanding to speak to a member of the British Embassy.

But he had been told by the British that they would not speak to the hostage-takers.

“We believe that the refusal by the British government to open a dialogue with the kidnappers cost our sister her life,” Deidre, Geraldine, Kathryn and Michael Fitzsimons said in a statement released today.

Sunday Life

Mad Dog’s barking up wrong tree: Killer Stone claims Adair won’t make thousands from book

Exclusive by Stephen Breen
04 June 2006

EXILED terror boss Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair will NOT get £100,000 for his controversial autobiography.

The claim was made last night by cemetery killer Michael Stone, who maintains the Shankill loyalist will only receive around £10,000 for the book.

Adair’s life story is being published by London-based Blake Publishing, which produced Stone’s book None Shall Divide Us.

The ousted terrorist, who recently received a £100,000 gift from lotto lout Michael Carroll, sparked controversy by claiming he deserved “every penny” for telling his life story.

But Stone, who has now returned to Northern Ireland after a brief stay in Portugal, branded Adair’s cash boast as “nonsense”.

The graveyard murderer claimed once his ghost writer and literary agents are paid, Adair will receive nowhere near £100,000.

Said Stone: “Why would anyone want to pay a semi-literate thug, who is nothing but a drug-dealer and a gangster, such a large amount of money.

“He will have received an initial contract offer of £10,000, because this is his first book. But the agent and ghost writer will have to get paid from this amount.

“If Daft Dog wants to make anywhere near £10,000, then he will have to wait to see how the book sales go.

“Adair is just doing this book to get his popularity back, but he is fighting a losing battle.

“My book ended up costing me £30,000 - and the same will happen to Adair.”

Adair hit back at his former hero and accused him of jealously, adding: “That man is criminally insane - he doesn’t know anything about my book deal.

“My book will be better than his, because I will be telling the truth - I’m not living in a fantasy world.

“I think it’s about time I told my story, because other people are making money off my name.

“Why shouldn’t I get this cash, after everything my family has been through?

“Stone may have had a chapter on me in his book, but I couldn’t be bothered writing a chapter on him. He’s finished.”

Sunday Life

04 June 2006

COPS are expected to pay “priority” visits to a number of senior UVF members before an explosive report into how the organisation was undermined by informers is published.

The murder bid on Mark Haddock has underlined the danger individuals identified in the Police Ombudsman’s report into the activities of police informers within the UVF could face.

The first draft of the report is now being written.

But it could be two months at least before it is finally published.

Investigators, who have spent more than a year probing the role of police agents within the UVF’s Mount Vernon battalion, are now writing the devastating report, informed sources say.

Outstanding legal issues could delay Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan’s final draft until September.

The Director of the Public Prosecution Service, Sir Alasdair Fraser, has still to decide whether to bring criminal charges against former agent-handlers.

Said one security source: “While names will be blanked out, it will be virtually impossible to ensure that identities will be sufficiently disguised to ensure individuals are not identifiable to their fellow UVF associates.

“This is a tight circle of terrorists, who know what each other did. So, when an incident is discussed in the report and an observation made, it will probably be possible for ‘Mr A’ and ‘Mr B’ to work out what ‘Mr C’ did and who the informer was. The shooting of Haddock just underlines how dangerous this is,” he said.

In spite of extensive speculation about what may be contained in Mrs O’Loan’s report, informed sources say there are explosive and highly-sensitive matters still unknown to the public.

Said a senior source: “A lot of people have suggested that it is all out there in the public domain and that all the basic details and allegations about the police touts who were operating in the north Belfast UVF has been outlined in the papers, but that is not the case.

“Those familiar with the investigation say there are many sensitive matters that are still known only to the Ombudsman and her investigators.”

If the Public Prosecution Service decides to bring charges against Haddock’s ex-Special Branch or CID handlers, that will mean that the first report will have to be heavily-edited or delayed indefinitely so as not to prejudice criminal proceedings.

Sunday Life

By Sunday Life Reporter
04 June 2006

A ROGUE UDA gang is suspected of copying the tactics of their one-time hero Johnny Adair to paint-bomb a young, disabled gay man’s home.

He was forced to flee his home - in the Co Down village of Killyleagh - after a window at the house was smashed and beer bottles filled with paint were splattered inside.

The gang has copied a tactic perfected by Adair during his time as commander of the UDA’s notorious Shankill ‘C’ company and switched to using paint-bombs because they can no longer access their arsenal of pipe-bombs.

Malcolm McCormick gave Sunday Life an interview last year in which he alleged that, because he was gay, he was being discriminated against as he socialised in Belfast.

A homophobic motive was one line of PSNI inquiry in the immediate aftermath of the attack on his Braeside Gardens home.

But it is now suspected the renegade gang targeted Mr McCormick because they did not approve of a man who was visiting his home.

Sources suggest they have also previously used the same paint-bomb tactic to target a Catholic home in the same Killyleagh estate.

The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) has already been asked by SDLP MLA Margaret Ritchie to rule if the activities of this UDA-linked gang - which has included gang members visiting houses and ordering people out of the village - is in line with the paramilitary group’s pledge that it is putting its violent past behind it.

Said Mrs Ritchie: “Community policing is about the community giving information and working in co-operation with the police.”

Sunday Life

Ex-UVF man’s speaks of his hopes for peace and of the time he shared a stage with Sinn Fein delegates

By Karen Ireland
04 June 2006

AN EX-UVF terrorist - who once stood on the platform at a Sinn Fein annual conference - spoke last night of his hopes of seeing Protestants and Catholics united at a prayer service at Stormont today.

David ‘Packie’ Hamilton - who served 11 years for terrorist offences - told Sunday Life: “As a known, leading loyalist terrorist, who once found himself in the middle of a republican Ard Fheis, I know how powerful prayer can be and how it can unite people.”

Up to 17,000 people are expected to converge on the Stormont Estate in Belfast today for the Global Day of Prayer.

Hamilton (50) - now minister of his own church in Stockport, outside Manchester - recalled the moment, several years after his release from jail, when he came face-to-face with republican prisoners from his H-Block past.

He said: “I was at a prayer meeting in Dublin when I looked out the window and saw loads of cars and people approaching the building we were in.

“I couldn’t believe it when I spotted Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness arriving.

“As I watched the comings-and-goings, I recognised several leading paramilitary men who had been in prison at the same time as me and I was petrified.

“I thought, ‘If these IRA men saw me, they would kill me’. Imagine me, a Prod and former UVF man in the middle of them at their conference in Dublin!”

Added Hamilton: “I panicked. I did the only thing I knew how to - I prayed and asked God to protect me and keep me safe.

“I walked out of the room we were in and came face-to-face with a one-time commander of the IRA.

“I didn’t know what else to do, so I shook his hand and told him I was in the same building praying for their conference and for peace.

“He knew who I was, but extended his hand, too, telling me that, just because I was a Protestant, didn’t make me all bad.

“Then he went in and told Gerry Adams about me being there and the next thing I knew I was on the platform.

“It turns out Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness knew all about me as they had read about me in a newspaper in the car on the way down to Dublin.

“There was an interview with a former IRA man who I had once given a lift to in my car - he called me ‘The Prod who lead him to God.’

“In my mind, God kept me safe that day - just like he had so many other times. I was once shot at three times - the fourth time, when the gun was put to my head, the trigger jammed.

“It was one night in prison, when I started to think about that time and the many others when I should have been killed - or, worse still, killed someone else by my actions - that I started thinking about God for the first time in my life.

“When I was released from prison that time, unlike all the others before, I vowed not to have anything to do with my old connections again and to try to put my life in some sort of order.

“That’s what I have been doing for the past 26 years - and I have seen so many changes in Northern Ireland and believe that it’s days like this, when people in the province and indeed the world unite, that we will see change.”

On leaving jail for the last time, Hamilton studied at Bible College before taking up evangelical ministry roles around the world.

He also married his second wife, Sharon. The couple have three children - Adam (21), Jonathan (18), April Joy (11) and also have grown-up children, Louise (30) and David (29) from previous relationships.

Said Hamilton: “It was difficult at the start - getting used to a new life and people torturing me to re-join gangs. It was stressful for the whole family.

“Sharon lost a baby during a time when there were many attempts on my life. It was after this that we decided to make a fresh start and I took up a post in Wales.”

In addition to his ministry work, he has worked with drug-addicts and written a book, A Cause Worth Living For, about his jail conversion.

He is now in the middle of writing a follow-up - A Cause Worth Dying For - which charts his life since prison.

“Do I have regrets about my past life and the things I was involved in? Of course I do.

“I spent years agonising and breaking my heart over what I had done, but finally I just had to work it all through with God and seek his forgiveness.

“You can’t let your past hold you back.”

• Global Day of Prayer, Stormont Estate, Belfast, 3pm-5.30pm.

Sunday Life

04 June 2006

A CONTROVERSIAL move is underway to name a council-owned park in Downpatrick after a dead IRA commander.

Sinn Fein is claiming that an all-party commitment by members of Down District Council to rename a sports pitch in Newcastle after former Ulster Unionist council chairman the late Gerry Douglas should result in “equality” for republicans.

And they want to name part of the Town Park in Downpatrick after IRA leader Colum Marks.

Marks (29) was shot dead by undercover RUC officers in the park, at St Patrick’s Avenue in the town, in April 1991.

A fully-primed horizontal mortar was found nearby.

Sinn Fein vice-chairman of the council, Eamonn Mac Con Midhe, said that, before the current four-year term of the council ends, his party intends bringing forward a proposal to name the park after Marks.

Mr Mac Con Midhe said: “I have already warned councillors.

“Once the sports pitch in Newcastle is renamed, we will be seeking equity for the community I represent.”

He said that, since the council had agreed to the joint-SDLP/Ulster Unionist motion to posthumously honour Mr Douglas, they should not be surprised when they get a request on behalf of local residents to name the park after Marks.

“People already refer to this park as ‘Collie Marks Park’.

“Now that we are in a post-conflict scenario, many tourists visit the site to pay their respects.

“If necessary, we will get signatures around the town to prove and support our case.”

But DUP councillor Billy Walker warned: “It won’t be happening.

“To compare Gerry Douglas - a man who served all sections of the community as a councillor for more than 20 years before his death - with an IRA terrorist, is contemptible.”

The spot where Marks was shot is already marked with a monument, which also carried the names of other IRA members who died in the area.

Unionists have failed in previous attempts to have it removed from council-owned land.

Sunday Life
04 June 2006

THE Canadian High Commission in London has agreed to meet a delegation from an Omagh bombing relatives’ group to discuss a Real IRA-linked website which is hosted in Toronto.

The High Commission’s political affairs minister, Ron Hoffman, has been in touch with the group to discuss possible dates for a meeting to examine how to deal with the website, which Lord Trimble says published a threat to murder him.

A spokesman for the commission said it had been in contact with the Omagh Support & Self-Help Group to suggest either a video-link or face-to-face meeting at its London offices.

Said the spokesman: “We have been in touch with the group and the High Commission is open to the idea of having a meeting with a delegation to discuss how we might approach this issue.”

The Omagh support group said that its chairman, Michael Gallagher, would be in contact with the High Commission this week after he returned from a visit to the US.

Lord Trimble said he hoped to attend the meeting to discuss how pressure could be brought on Canadian company Netfirms, which hosts the 32 County Sovereignty Movement (32 CSM) site.

Sunday Life

Warnings about IRA stealing explosives ignored, claims new book

By Ciaran McGuigan, Chief Reporter
04 June 2006

THE Dublin government ignored repeated warnings that the IRA was able to steal explosives for its deadly bombing campaigns from right under their noses, according to a former Irish army officer.

The shocking claims are made in a new book - Speaking Truth to Power - by Londonderry-born author Don Mullan which tackles corruption in the Irish Defence Forces.

Ex-Irish army commandant Patrick Walshe was detailed to administer security at the Irish Industrial Explosives Plant at Clonagh, Co Meath in 1974.

The Irish Defence Forces took responsibility for security at the plant on behalf of the Department of Justice.

But Walshe’s grim warnings to superiors that the plant was ripe to be targeted by paramilitaries looking for explosives went unheeded he claims.

Walshe told the author: “It was a supermarket for bombers with no one on-duty at the checkout.”

It is believed explosives from the plant may not only have provided the firepower for the IRA’s early 1970s bombing campaigns, but explosives from the same source, intercepted by the British security forces, had been used in the UVF bomb attacks on Dublin and Monaghan.

In 1972, a leading British civil servant was able to gain access to the plant posing as a friend of one of the plant’s directors.

The ease with which he gained access confirmed British fears that the plant was wide open to exploitation by the IRA.

Commandant Walshe told the author that when he was handed responsibility for security at the plant two years later he immediately warned officials of the lapses in security that still existed.

He even photographed the ease with which bombers could gain access to the site and the explosives.

Another senior army officer, Colonel James Cogan, later described the situation as “a scandalous and criminal lack of security”.

In one note to his superiors, three months after he first warned about the lack of security, Walshe warned about large quantities of explosive materials stored just yards from the factory flimsy perimeter fence.

In September 1974, he concluded: “. . . there can be no reasonable assurance that the source of bomb-making material in unauthorised hands has not come from the Irish Industrial Explosives Plant at Clonagh”.

Walshe was even admonished for reporting the security lapses.

A fellow officer who reported the matter directly to the Irish Minister of Defence was later warned by his superiors that he had placed his military career in jeopardy.

Walshe said: “On February 6, 1975 unexpectedly, the military security duties at Clonagh were transferred to another unit.

“The Chief of Staff and security officials in the Department of Justice had failed to silence us, so the duty was returned to ’safer hands’.

“I had pointed out that there can be no confidence in the State Security System until the officials responsible for the scandal at Clonagh are identified and dealt with.”

• Speaking Truth To Power by Don Mullan is published by Currach Press.

Sunday Life

04 June 2006

A dossier outlining alleged Garda/IRA collusion in the border areas is to be handed over to the Dublin Judge investigating the killings of RUC officers, Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan.

It is understood the dossier also pinpoints houses on the Cooley peninsula and Co Monaghan which were allegedly used by the IRA as interrogation and murder centres.

The ‘collusion dossier’ is the work of victim’s worker, William Frazer and has taken several years to compile.

As well as the Breen and Buchanan murders, it includes information on the abduction and murder of former RUC Reservist, William Meaklin in August 1975.

There is information too on the infamous Tullyvallen and Kingsmills massacres, and several IRA gun attacks which killed RUC and UDR personnel in south Armagh

The activities of the IRA’s notorious Internal Security Unit bosses and John Joe Magee and Freddie Scappaticci are also featured, and houses where they interrogated victims pinpointed.

“I know of two houses in the Omeath area where Magee and Scappaticci interrogated suspected security force informants,” said Mr Frazer.

“There is evidence some of the suspects were executed at one of the houses. ”

Mr Frazer claimed his dossier would show there were several IRA ‘moles’ active inside Garda stations along the border at the height of the Troubles.

The outspoken victims worker confirmed he would be travelling to Dublin to hand over his dossier over to Irish Judge, Peter Smithwick, who is heading the Dublin based investigation into allegations of Garda/IRA collusion.

The Tribunal is not expected to begin public hearings for several months.

Sunday Life

Exclusive by Ciaran McGuigan, Chief Reporter
04 June 2006

THESE are the men being quizzed by cops about the attempted murder of UVF double agent Mark Haddock. (Photo not here)

The man hiding behind the Hallowe’en mask is convicted blackmailer Willie ‘Mr Muscles’ Young, Haddock’s former second-in-command in the Mount Vernon UVF.

Young was a regular in the public gallery during Haddock’s trial for the attempted murder of pub doorman Trevor Gowdy, and wore this mask to hide his face from the media as he went in and out of the Laganside court complex.

In spite of his public support for Haddock, Sunday Life understands Young was arrested in north Belfast on Friday morning and was last night still being quizzed by cops about the murder bid on his former friend.

Also being questioned was Darren Moore, who stood beside Haddock in the dock charged in relation to the attempted murder of Gowdy.

Moore - who has also been questioned about the UVF murder of former UDA commander Tommy English in 2000 - was eventually cleared of the attack on Gowdy.

A judge stayed the case against Moore after the doorman suffered a nervous breakdown in the witness box before Moore’s lawyer could cross-examine him.

Special Branch agent Haddock was last night continuing to recover in the Royal Victoria Hospital after being shot six times in the body when he was lured to a meeting on the Doagh Road, Newtownabbey last Tuesday.

Loyalist sources have told Sunday Life that the attempt on Haddock’s life was carried out with the full knowledge of the UVF’s leadership.

According to those sources, the UVF’s Shankill Road-based chief-of-staff gave the green light for the murder of Haddock.

And the loyalist paramilitary group’s ‘brigadier’ in South East Antrim is believed to have given the nod to Haddock’s would-be killers.

It is understood that cops have already spoken to Haddock as he recovers under armed guard in hospital.

They have not yet taken a full statement about the murder bid from the Special Branch informer, but it is understood that Haddock has been willing to identify the man who set him up for murder and the other men who joined him in the murder bid.

And he has told his family that they may have to leave Ulster if he now gives evidence against his attackers.

Sunday Life understands that three men were involved in the attempt on Haddock’s life.

As he arrived at the arranged meeting place near Mossley Orange Hall last Tuesday, the man who had set up the meeting got out of front passenger seat of a car and started talking to Haddock.

While they were talking, it is believed a second man got out of the back of the car and opened fire on Haddock with a small calibre handgun with a fitted silencer.

The gunman fired six shots into Haddock’s body before the two men then fled with their waiting driver.

Police involved in the investigation were yesterday carrying out further searches of properties in greater Belfast.

Two men continued to help them with their inquiries, a spokesman said.

Sunday Life

By Stephen Gordon
04 June 2006

JOHNSTON Brown - the retired CID detective who says shot loyalist Mark Haddock was given a “licence to kill” by Special Branch officers - says he is appalled that police have not investigated his claims.

Mr Brown says he has felt like a “voice in the wilderness” after revealing how a gang of UVF killers from Mount Vernon were allowed to kill and kill again.

He says Raymond McCord, who son Raymond jnr was brutally murdered by a UVF gang, is right to demand that Chief Sir Hugh Orde have Haddock questioned.

And he says the PSNI appeared more concerned that revelations in his book Into The Dark would breach official secrets rather than investigate the allegations that a serial killer (Haddock) and his murderous gang became untouchables.

“Haddock was at large and was a threat to public safety but the police never came to speak me,” said Mr Brown.

“No one from the Historical Enquiries team has come to talk to me about these murders,” he said.

“How loud do you have to shout? The police were trying to ignore what I was saying.”

Mr Brown also revealed how Police Ombudsman investigators had to switch the venue of a meeting with him in 2004 because of Haddock.

“I was to have met them in the La Mon House Hotel but the venue had to be switched because it was discovered Mark Haddock was meeting his Branch handlers at the same hotel.”

Mr Brown said a teenage Mark Haddock was recruited as a CID informer in 1984 and became a Special Branch agent in 1991.

The ex-CID man recalls Haddock crying like a baby and confessing to the 1993 sectarian killing of Catholic woman Sharon McKenna.

But Haddock was not prosecuted because he was a protected Branch agent.

He says following Sharon McKenna’s murder Haddock became a monster who was behind a string of brutal UVF slayings.

In his best selling book, Mr Brown had only identified the agent and serial killer as X but he named Haddock on a UTV Insight documentary on Thursday.

Mr Brown says other agents in the UVF gang, identified as Y and Z in the book, remain at large and were also involved in murders.

He says he has since been tipped off that the PSNI may arrest him for breaching the official secrets.

Mr Brown says that while he is protecting many official secrets he will not stand by and allow public safety to be threatened by a culture of protecting dangerous men like Haddock from arrest and conviction.

“It would not be tolerated anywhere else in the United Kingdom or, indeed, in the world. But it seems no one wants to bring Haddock to book,” he said.

“I believe there should be no hiding place for these people,” he said.

Sunday Life
04 June 2006

SPECIAL Branch informer Mark Haddock has been linked to 21 murders and branded a serial killer.

He was publicly identified as being involved in nine murders by Irish Labour TD Pat Rabbitte using Dail privilege.

He named the victims as being:

Sharon McKenna in 1993;

Catholic builders Gary Convie and Eamon Fox in 1994;

Alleged informer Thomas Sheppard in 1996;

Protestant clergyman Rev David Templeton in 1997;

Billy Harbinson in 1997;

Raymond McCord jnr in 1997;

Former UDA commander Tommy English 2000;

David Greer in 2000.

Sunday Life

04 June 2006

THE father of a UVF murder victim last night repeated calls for Special Branch agent Mark Haddock to be arrested in his hospital bed.

Raymond McCord, whose son Raymond jnr was battered to death almost nine years ago, wants Haddock charged in relation to a string of murders carried out by the Mount Vernon UVF since the early 1990s.

“I am calling on Hugh Orde to arrest Haddock in his hospital bed and charge him in relation to the murders that have been carried out by his gang.”

And he called on the 108 members of the Assembly to back his calls for a full public inquiry into the role played by security forces informers in paramilitary murders.

Haddock is currently on bail awaiting the outcome of his trial for the attempted murder of pub doorman Trevor Gowdy.

He is also the subject of an upcoming report by the Police Ombudsman which is said to be damning in highlighting Haddock’s activities while he was a Special Branch agent.

Sunday Business Post

By Pat Leahy
04 June 2006

A large part of St Stephen’s Green in Dublin will be closed to allow the building of an underground rail station.

Most of the park is likely to be excavated and construction will continue for two to three years, as part of the building of the new metro and rail network. The Railway Procurement Agency (RPA) is in negotiations with Dublin City Council, the Office of Public Works and Irish Rail about the routing of the proposed metro – which will run to the airport – and the Heuston-Docklands underground railway. They will both run through the underground station at St Stephen’s Green.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Transport said that the metro proposals, including the St Stephen’s Green plan, would be put to the Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, ‘‘after the summer’’.

The St Stephen’s Green station is a key part of the €34.4 billion Transport 21 plan announced by the minister last year.

At the time, Cullen said that the station would be completed by 2009, although several sources said that the deadline was optimistic. A spokesman for the RPA said that discussions were continuing as to where ‘‘within the Green’’ the new station would be located.

‘‘There’ll be an engineering logic to the location,” he said. ‘‘Some of the park will be closed, there’s no doubt about that. I don’t think all of it will be closed.”