SAOIRSE32

BBC

27/06/2006 - 12:16:36

Brian Meehan began his appeal today against his conviction for the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin - one day after the tenth anniversary of the gunning down of the crime reporter on the Naas Road in 1996.

Meehan (aged 41), a native of Crumlin in Dublin is the only person serving a sentence for Ms Guerin’s murder on June 26, 1996. He was jailed for life by the Special Criminal Court in July 1999 and also given concurrent jail sentences of 20, 12 and 5 years for drugs and firearms offences.

The court found that Meehan was the driver of the motorbike from which a gunman fired six shots into Ms Guerin’s body as she sat in her car stopped at traffic lights on the Naas Road.

Meehan was in court today for the opening of his appeal and spoke briefly to his father Kevin Meehan who was also in court. Retired Detective Superintendent Todd O’ Loughlin, who was one of the senior garda officers in charge of the Lucan investigation team, was also in court for the hearing.

Today Meehan’s counsel Mr Patrick Gageby SC told the Court of Criminal Appeal that he would be challenging the evidence of Russell Warren who is in the Witness Protection Programme and whose evidence led to Meehan’s conviction for murder.

Mr Gageby submitted that the Special Criminal Court should not have accepted evidence of traffic between Meehan’s mobile phone and Warren’s mobile phone on the morning of the murder as corroboration of Warren’s evidence.

Mr Gageby said that between the first day of the trial and the last day of the trial there was “an abundance of evidence laid before the court”.

He said there was no doubt that the telephone traffic evidence was the “trigger” which allowed the Special Criminal Court to accept it as corroboration of the evidence of Russell Warren who was an accomplice.

Mr Gageby said that Warren’s core case was that Brian Meehan was a complicit part in a joint act and that included being proxy to the plot to kill Ms Guerin.

The hearing before the three judge Court of Criminal Appeal is expected to last three days and the court is expected to reserve its judgement.

BN.ie

27/06/2006 - 12:00:02

A 22-year-old Dublin man has pleaded guilty to the possession of an improvised bomb which was found in a car on the M50 Westlink toll bridge.

Martin O’Rourke of Sheepmore Grove Blanchardstown pleaded guilty at the Special Criminal Court today to knowingly possessing an explosive substance, namely an improvised explosive device at the Westlink Toll Plaza at Castleknock on December 8 last year.

Mr Justice Paul Butler, presiding at the three-judge court heard from prosecuting counsel Mr Tom O’Connell SC that O’Rourke was currently serving a sentence on another matter.

He was remanded in custody for sentence on July 11 next.

A large number of his friends and family were in court for today’s brief hearing.

Following his arrest last year Detective Garda Brian Cagney of the Special Detective Unit gave evidence of arresting O’Rourke at Clondalkin Garda Station.

Belfast Telegraph

Some relief over recent marches

By Noel McAdam
26 June 2006

The Parades Commission will issue its verdict on the Drumcree flashpoint march later this week, it was confirmed today.

Attention switched to the annual Garvaghy Road dispute in Portadown as relief spread in the aftermath of the peaceful weekend Whiterock parade.

Following a relatively low-key Tour of the North parade, including Ardoyne the previous weekend, hopes of a quiet marching season are rising.

But there has been no direct contact between Portadown district Orangemen and the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition.

The new Commission, minus former Portadown Orangeman David Burrows who has agreed to take no part in Portadown decisions, will meet on Wednesday and issue its determination probably within 24 hours.

Nationalist, however, have warned that Whiterock, where a failed last-minute attempt at mediation between Orange leaders and residents led to a beefed-up police presence, must not become a template for other areas.

Orange spokesmen, however, said the principle of an Orange parade on the Springfield Road had now been established and should lead to a full parade next year.

Order Grand Secretary Drew Nelson said: “The peaceful outcome was entirely due, not to the Parades Commission, but to the efforts of the Orange Order and the wider community in the Greater Shankill area.”

DUP West Belfast Assembly member Diane Dodds said the future meant it had to be recognised that part of the Springfield Road must be shared. “It is the only way forward,” she said.

And Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey said the two successful parades were the result of courageous decisions to engage with residents, a more pragmatic approach from the Commission and sensitive policing - from which lessons should be learned.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams commended “the dignified and disciplined” response of the Springfield Road residents.

“The calm, thoughtful and courageous stand was in stark contrast to the disgraceful determination of the Parades Commission which was essentially a surrender to loyalist threats,” he said.

And West Belfast SDLP Assembly member Alex Attwood warned that despite the peaceful outcome it had been “a bad decision badly arrived at” by the Commission.

“We are no closer to an enduring settlement of the Whiterock issue, and we may be further away,” he said.

PSNI Chief Superintendents Gary White and David Boultwood urged both communities to continue to work together to ensure a peaceful marching season.

Belfast Telegraph

Woman’s appeal for transplant op

By Brendan McDaid
27 June 2006

An Ulster woman who was told she was too ill to undergo a life-saving operation today said she will fight to get back on the hospital transplant list.

Derry woman Michaela McKinney (34) has now been told that she has only three weeks to live.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan today vowed to fight for patients’ right to have a say in whether they undergo life-saving organ transplant surgery.

He spoke out after Ms McKinney’s name was struck off the transplant waiting list at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Ms McKinney, from Linsfort Drive in Creggan, has made plans for her funeral and today said her life has been left in ruins after she was deemed by a medical panel to be too ill to undergo a heart and lung transplant.

Ms McKinney, who was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition at the age of nine, was taken off the list after her kidneys failed earlier this year.

She said: “I am sort of left in limbo now and I want to fight to get back on the list.

“These are ordinary people like me - the only difference is they have a degree - making decisions on my life. I want to live and I want a transplant. I think it should be down to each individual whether they would be prepared to take the risk.”

Ms McKinney said she has been told her case would be reviewed if her condition improves, but she said her kidneys had failed in the first place because of the condition of her heart.

She said: “I want the chance for me to put my case across to them. I am sitting here thinking - am I going to see Christmas?”

Ms McKinney said she arranged her own funeral recently after being told she might have only weeks to live.

“I had prepared myself to die. Then I was lying on the dialysis saying ‘I don’t want to die yet. I am only 34′,” she said.

Ms McKinney said that when she was a baby, her mother had tried to alert doctors that there was a problem with her.

She said: “If I had had the operation to relieve the symptoms earlier, this would have been a whole different ball game, but by the age of nine a lot of the damage had already been done. “I feel like I have been failed twice.”

Foyle MP Mr Durkan added: “This is Catch 22 for her and I will be making representations to see whether or not this decision on Michaela can be reviewed.

“Also the Government is repeatedly emphasising the importance of patients having their views, choices and input heard, and this is something I want to raise at a higher level.

“Nobody is pretending that transplant surgery is not delicate, but the fact is we are talking about life or death here.”

A spokeswoman for the Freeman Hospital said today patients were removed from the transplant list if it was believed they might not survive the operation.

“We do not get that many hearts and lungs, and we want them to work,” she said.

“The door is kept open and if we are asked by a patient’s consultant to review them, we will review them.”

People can register to be donors on-line on www.uktransplant.org.uk

BN.ie

27/06/2006 - 08:10:15

Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley has said he and his colleagues will not change their policies in response to threats of financial sanctions from the British government.

Dr Paisley was speaking after a leaked Northern Ireland Office document showed that the DUP stands to lose almost £2m (€2.9m) if it fails to agree a power-sharing deal with Sinn Féin by November 24.

The Irish and British governments have set that date as the deadline for reaching agreement on restoring devolution.

They say they will scrap the Northern Assembly if the deadline is not met, meaning all MLAs will lose their salaries and allowances.

The leaked NIO document shows that these are worth almost £2m (€2.9m) to the DUP, but Dr Paisley says it is laughable to suggest this would influence the party’s judgement on whether Sinn Féin is fit for government.

He said yesterday that the DUP “would never bow the knee to money to be slaves to the British Government”.

BBC

About 20 residents of the Fountain estate in Derry have protested against the time at which a gate on the edge of the estate is being closed.

On Monday, police promised to lock the entry at Bishop’s Gate every night, in an effort to stop interface violence.

But when they tried to close the gate at 2000 BST they were faced with a picket.

One of those involved, Grace Curry, said the gate should stay open until 2300 BST.

“We’re not lying down to it, we’re not going to be hemmed in like monkeys - that day is over,” she said.

“As and from now we’re standing our ground - united.

“Hopefully we’ll have this protest every night until the police get the message that we aren’t going to stick to what they say, we’re not going to abide by them all the time. We want it closed at 11 o’clock and that’s it.”

BBC

The hijackers left a package on a Metro bus

A suspect object found on a Metro bus hijacked in Glengormley, County Antrim, has been declared a hoax.

Ciaran Rogan from Translink said two men boarded the bus just after 0700 BST, left a package and told the driver to drive it to Glengormley Orange arch.

Traffic in the area was diverted from the centre of the village.

Chief Inspector John McCaughan condemned those responsible and said they “had no regard for ordinary people trying to lead normal lives”.

He appealed for witnesses. The Ballyclare Road was closed for a time.

Army technical experts attended the scene, but no controlled explosions were carried out.

Mr Rogan said the driver got the five passengers on board off, did as he was instructed and called the authorities.

He added that the bus was equipped with CCTV, which would be handed over to the authorities.

A representative of the Orange Order said that 500 people were expected to take part in the mini-Twelfth parade in the village on Tuesday evening.

He said that there had been an “ongoing campaign” against parades in the area in recent years.

Daily Ireland

SDLP blasts British government over allocation of social homes

By Eamonn Houston
26/06/2006

The British government was last night accused of ‘disgraceful complacency’ in its allocation of public housing in the North.
SDLP leader Mark Durkan said he had complained to the direct-rule secretary of state, Peter Hain, about the Department of Social Development (DSD) as a result of what he termed ‘serious inequalities’ in the allocation of public housing.
Mr Durkan said he had obtained figures which highlighted how Catholics were being discriminated against when trying to secure public housing.
The figures revealed that:
- in south Belfast, 39 per cent of those on the waiting list for public housing were Catholic but none of those who got housing were Catholic in that quarter;
- in north Belfast, 74 per cent of those waiting for housing were Catholic, but only 36 per cent of those who got housing were Catholic;
- in west Belfast 72 per cent of those waiting for housing were Catholic, but only 40 per cent of those allocated housing were Catholic;
- in the North as a whole, 48 per cent of those waiting for housing were Catholic, but only 35 per cent of those getting housing were Catholic.
Mr Durkan stated: “Unfairness in the allocation of public housing was one of the key causes of the Troubles. You would expect then that the Department of Social Development would be worried to find inequalities now, but instead DSD thinks there isn’t even a problem.”
The SDLP said the situation was not ‘old style discrimination’ but he claimed that its effect was the same.
Mr Durkan said: “Catholics in need are not getting housing on equal terms.
“The problem is caused by the fact that Catholics cannot move into vacant housing in Protestant areas for fear of attack.
“Meanwhile, little new public housing is being built to accommodate growing demand. So Catholics are left with nowhere to go.
“Faced with this problem you would expect action from the Department of Social Development, but they have not drawn up a strategy to deal with it.
“Worse, they don’t even think there is a problem and freely admit that they have not even done an assessment of the issue.
“In response to a parliamentary question they even stated: “No assessment is made as housing is allocated on the basis of need.”
“But the reality is that there are Catholics in equal need of housing and just not getting it.”
No one from DSD was available yesterday to comment on Mr Durkan’s accusations.

Daily Ireland

BY David Lynch
26/06/2006

Protests will greet the largest warship in the British Navy when it arrives in Dublin on Thursday.
Anti war protests intend marching to the HMS Ocean when she docks in Dublin on Thursday.
Daily Ireland revealed last week HMS Ocean, which was heavily involved in the invasion of Iraq, would visit Dublin.
The Irish Anti War Movement (Iawm) will assemble at 6pm on Thursday at the famine memorial at the Irish Financial Services Centre, and then march to the warship.
“This ship was involved in a war that led to the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqis,” Richard Boyd Barrett of the Iawm told Daily Ireland, “We are encouraging all people who are against the Iraq invasion and occupation to come out in support of our protest.”
Retired decorated Irish army commandant and anti war activist Ed Horgan said he was “firmly opposed” to the visit.
“I have serious problems about this ship coming, it is all part of the militarisation of Ireland,” he told Daily Ireland.
“We should not be accepting ships that were involved directly or indirectly in the war in Iraq.
“I think all of this is about softening the Irish people up, getting them used to seeing warships in their ports from Britain.
“I would be against any ships that were involved in the Iraq war such as American warships coming here.
“We have no need for them.”

Daily Ireland

Chef asks why suspect in such a high-profile spy scandal – who would be expected to stay below PSNI radar – should hound police to gain more access to his son - Suspect says extradition is pushed by British Intelligence elements intent on undermining peace process

JIM DEE Daily Ireland USA correspondent
26/06/2006

Larry Zaitschek awoke last Friday expecting to learn more about a Belfast judge’s intention to grant him expanded contact with his son.
Instead, he learned that he may soon be behind bars awaiting extradition to Belfast for a crime that he swears he had no involvment in.
“I had nothing to do with the break-in at Castlereagh,” Zaitschek told Daily Ireland hours after it emerged that the PSNI will seek his extradition for the March 2002 burglary. “I don’t even think about it. My whole focus is my son – all day, everyday.”
Zaitschek believes it’s no coincidence that the PSNI’s extradition move began days after a Belfast judge decided to grant him more contact with his eight-year-old son Pearse, who’s been with his estranged wife in a police witness protection programme since 2002.
He said that the new court order, which he expects to be formally issued on Thursday, will grant him regular (albeit PSNI-monitored) phone calls with Pearse, as well as the exchange of audio and video tapes, and letters. The US consulate in Belfast will again be allowed to visit Pearse on Zaitschek’s behalf (an arrangement that was revoked at his ex-wife’s request after two consular visits in 2002 and 2003). Zaitschek will also be given redacted reports relating to Pearse’s schooling, as well as medical reports.
The greater contact with Pearse hasn’t emerged by accident. Over the past four years, Zaitschek has spent thousands of dollars and countless hours pursuing legal actions to force the PSNI to yield to his demands.
Persistently reminding the PSNI of your existence via ongoing court actions could be viewed as odd behaviour for a man allegedly up to his neck in the Castlereagh break-in.
Some might think it more prudent for a suspect in such a high-profile espionage scandal to lie low, and stay off the PSNI’s radar. Instead Zaitschek has hounded the PSNI.
And believes that his dogged judicial battle against the PSNI to gain more access to Pearse helped trigger the PSNI’s recent extradition move.
“If I never pursued any contact with my son, and just ran and hid, I don’t think this would have happened at any stage,” insisted Zaitschek.“It’s because I kept pushing. And I kept pushing because I had nothing to do with Castlereagh.”
As he had done when interviewed by Daily Ireland last December, Zaitschek stressed that the route leading to his Castlereagh employment was pure happenstance – and not part of some clever plan to penetrate Belfast’s top secret cop shop.
His journey to Castlereagh’s kitchen began in August 1998, when he was driving to his home on the Antrim coast after leaving a Belfast restaurant where he worked.
His car flipped over after hitting a boulder that had fallen off a tractor. His back was broken in the accident and he spent two weeks in the hospital before being discharged with instructions not to return to work for at least three months.
“A couple of months later, to be quite honest, I couldn’t stand being at home every single day with my mother-in-law right next door,” he said.
“So, despite my doctor’s advice, I went to get kind of an easy job – not your typical restaurant job where you’re working 60 hours a week. I wanted something more relaxed.”
Visiting a training and employment centre in Larne, he spied an index card on a wall advertising a chef’s opening at Castlereagh. He applied and got the job.
“And the 37 and a half hours the Castlereagh job offered – that’s part time for me,” said Zaitschek.
Following the Castlereagh break-in, much was made of his friendship with Sinn Féin’s Denis Donaldson who was exposed as a long-time British spy last December and subsequently murdered in Donegal.
Numerous media reports suggested that Zaitschek conspired with Donaldson to help pull off the Castlereagh burglary.
However, Zaitschek continues to maintain that his friendship with Donaldson, which began when the two met in his native New York in the early 1990s, was nothing more than casual. He says that, following his relocation to Ireland in 1995, he and Donaldson met socially a few times, but that they fell out of touch in mid-1997 and never saw each other again.
Zaitschek says that contrary to reports indicating that he left Ireland in a panic following the Castlereagh break-in, he’d given his employers a month’s notice and had purchased his plane ticket “well in advance” of leaving.
“I had a career opportunity here in New York, Someone was offering me $70,000 (£38,500; €56,000) a year, as opposed to the $30,000 (£16,500; €24,000) a year I was making there,” said Zaitschek.
He has “good luck” cards that were given to him by PSNI officers, some of whom took him out on the town drinking to say good-bye.
Members of Sinn Féin have, in the past, made allegations that, whenever the stalled peace process shows even the remotest hint of movement, something like Castlereagh, Colombia, Stormontgate, or Denis Donaldson’s killing suddenly surfaces to muddy the waters.
As such, with the latest “last-ditch effort” to revive the assembly wobbling but still alive, the timing of the PSNI’s extradition move seems suspicious to some. Zaitschek himself believes that the PSNI’s extradition move has likely been pushed by Special Branch or British intelligence elements intent on undermining the peace process.
“Anybody would be blind and completely living in another reality to suggest that the two aren’t connected,” insisted Zaitschek.
“You had Colombia and the Colombia Three, and that kind of fell apart. Then you had the Stormont situation, and we all know what happened with that. And then you have Castlereagh. In terms of actual cases, this is the last opportunity that some people have to resist change.”
Zaitschek said that, regardless of why he has been placed in the frame regarding Castlereagh, he’ll never admit responsibility for a crime he claims he never committed.
“I am going to fight this – and I have support here from family and friends in the Irish-American community, and probably beyond,” he insists. “I’m going to fight this with every possible shred of fight that I have in me.”

Daily Ireland

Ten years after Veronica Guerin’s murder, a former colleague praises her bravery and tenacity, assesses her career and asks why she was so mistrusted by men close to Charlie Haughey?

Eamonn Farrell
26/06/2006

Like the death of John F Kennedy or 9/11, most people will remember where they were or what they were doing when they heard of Veronica Guerin’s death.
I was in my plush new office on Ormond Quay in Dublin and I was about to invite her over for a drink and brag about my new salubrious surroundings. Then I got the awful phone call.
I first met Veronica when she worked for Charles Haughey on the New Ireland Forum. Over the next few years we bumped into each other occasionally at the forum and I photographed her when she was elected mayor of Raheny. She was vivacious, outgoing, fun and, despite her girl-next-door appearance, sexy. At that stage I knew nothing of the qualities which were later to make her stand out as an investigative journalist. The drive, determination, competitiveness, bravery and sheer bloody-mindedness.
Our paths didn’t cross for a few years, until a journalist friend with whom I shared a tiny, cheap office on South William Street, mentioned that a third party had introduced him to a young woman who was just starting out in journalism and was looking for an office to share. It was Veronica and for the next few years an unstoppable whirlwind invaded our tiny space, turning upside down our genteel routine of serving the needs of quality British broadsheets with copy and photos.
It was from our little office, Veronica started her assault on the world of journalism, firstly with the Sunday Business Post, then with the Sunday Tribune, and finally with the Sunday Independent. She was a welcome, if at first, disruptive addition, to our cosy set-up. But she almost never made it in the door.
Dublin is a small city and, in the world of journalism and politics, a very small and intimate city. I doubt if there is another capital in the developed world where a ministerial car might pull up beside a journalist in the street, open the door and tell him or her to get in. But that was the Dublin in which we were approached by a very senior Fianna Fáil figure and advised not to allow that ‘f***ing c**t’ into our office.
We decided to ignore the advice and allow Veronica in.
Fianna Fáil officials suspected Veronica of trawling through party files and barred her from their offices. The question of course, is, what was she looking for, and perhaps more important, what did she find?
A few years before Veronica was murdered, I was skiing in Austria and met an Irish couple. The man was in the meat trade and connected to Fianna Fáil. In conversation, Veronica’s name came up and he was less than complimentary, insisting that Charles Haughey was nervous and mistrustful of her, despite the fact that she had assisted him at the forum. At the time I thought it quite strange, but never mentioned it to Veronica.
When Veronica started working from our office most of her output saw its way into the Sunday Business Post, and it wasn’t long before her articles began appearing on the front page.
We worked on a few stories together, but only in the sense that she told me the detail of the story and I worked out how to get the pictures. She was enthusiastic and excitable. She could see no difficulty with her style of confrontational, in-your-face journalism.
As she turned more and more away from business stories and towards covering of crime, I told her she was on her own.
In February 1992, businessman Ben Dunne, hired a prostitute on holiday in Florida, took some cocaine, thought he could fly and ended up in court.
So began a series of events which caused the combustion of the Irish political system, exposed the self-serving nature of politics and a gallery of rogues ranging from county councillors, to high officials, TDs, government ministers and a taoiseach. And these servants of the people were tempted and encouraged on their way to the altar of corruption by an array of builders, developers, financiers, company executives and PR handlers who believed that to make your fortune you must be prepared to spend loadsamoney buying votes and influence.
It was into this world of political and commercial corruption that Veronica Guerin began to ply her new-found trade as an investigative journalist. And she was good.As she showed later in her crime stories, she could be relentless and fearless in her pursuit of an interview. There is no doubt that the level of crime which existed needed exposing.
John Gilligan had all the hallmarks of being the first relatively clever Irish criminal. He was reaping the rewards of drug smuggling with very little apparent interference from the law.
The ability of criminals to successfully accumulate such vast sums of money raises serious questions about policing methods. But the real danger is that this kind of money can buy off police, judiciary and politicians. It can lead to the creation of a society where the average citizen can no longer determine who is friend or foe and as a result undermine trust in the democratic institutions of the state.
We know that sections of the business community did pay politicians – right up to the very top. Was the undermining of democracy by a small elite of rich, tanned and beautifully-suited businessmen not a bigger story than the emergence of a small group of successful criminals?
In the end, the conspiracy by a section of the business community to create conditions favourable to their own financial interests, was exposed not by investigative journalism, but by Ben Dunne stuffing too much cocaine up his nose.
When I argued with Veronica about the inevitable outcome of continuing with her crime reporting, she indicated she had something else, very big, to turn to, but it wasn’t ready yet. What was this big story? Why was she so mistrusted by people close to Haughey?
There are a group of people in prison because they are criminals who are believed either to have murdered Veronica or to have helped in her murder. Only one man has been convicted of her killing and it is likely this will be overturned on appeal.
Who did kill Veronica Guerin? Who benefited most from her death? Maybe it was the gang who are in prison. Maybe not.
The last time I saw Veronica before she died was on a busy city centre street. She rolled down the window of her red car and shouted across to me: “Are you still in love?” “Yes,” I replied. “Ah, you’ll learn,” she laughed back. Boot to the floor and she was gone.
There was no chance to ask her over for that drink, and to brag about my new offices. Little did I know I would never see her again.

Guardian

By Shawn Pogatchnik
Monday June 26, 2006 6:01 PM

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - The British and Irish governments plotted a course Monday for top-level negotiations later this week in Northern Ireland, where efforts to revive a Catholic-Protestant administration have failed to get anywhere.

Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern and Britain’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, discussed the impasse at Hain’s official residence, Hillsborough Castle near Belfast.

Hain and Ahern said later their governments had completed a confidential agenda for Thursday, when the British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, will oversee Belfast talks involving the four local parties that are supposed to form a power-sharing administration.

A previous coalition fell apart in October 2002 over an Irish Republican Army spying scandal inside the government. But the IRA disarmed last year and declared its 1997 cease-fire would be permanent - moves designed to resurrect cooperation between Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party and Protestants.

The two premiers - whose close cooperation underpinned the province’s landmark Good Friday accord - last traveled together to Northern Ireland in April, when they unveiled a joint push for reviving power-sharing, the central goal of the 1998 peace deal. They ordered the long-mothballed Northern Ireland Assembly to reconvene and gave its 108 members a Nov. 24 deadline to elect an administration - or lose their jobs for good.

But the major Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists, says it will not work with Sinn Fein, which represents most Catholics in Northern Ireland, until the IRA disbands and Sinn Fein accepts the authority of the province’s police force.

“There will be no quick fixes with IRA-Sinn Fein,'’ said Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley in a statement addressed to Blair. “There will be no compromise of our democratic position and there will be no surrender to terrorists.'’

Paisley said the IRA had retained some firearms and was still involved in criminal activities, while Sinn Fein leaders were failing to “encourage their community to help the police in the fight against crime and terror.'’

Earlier, in comments explicitly aimed at the Democratic Unionists, Hain said Northern Ireland voters expected all politicians “to do the jobs to which they were elected,'’ not “to pack up and go home to another life after midnight on Nov. 24.'’

Dermot Ahern emphasized that both governments were committed to that deadline, even if failure meant an end to power-sharing efforts for years.

“We expect people to come up to the mark,'’ he said. “Nov. 24 is sacrosanct.'’

While the Democratic Unionists refuse to cooperate, the British government under Hain has pressed ahead with cutbacks and reforms in Northern Ireland that are often widely unpopular, such as plans to raise business taxes, abolish elite grammar schools and introduce fees for water services. Hain says if residents do not like what he is doing, they should put him out of a job by taking control of these policy areas themselves.

Hain also has stressed Britain’s interest in coordinating policies in Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic, a part of the 1998 peace deal designed to appeal to Catholic leaders, who seek the eventual unification of Ireland.

On Monday, in the latest such step, Hain and Dermot Ahern announced that all people aged at least 65 in both parts of Ireland would be provided free travel on all bus and train services throughout the island beginning in April 2007.

Free travel for senior citizens was introduced in the Republic of Ireland more than three decades ago, and in Northern Ireland in 1995, but until now travelers were able to get free tickets only for bus and train services that started within their own country, with no free connections possible inside the other part of Ireland. The new plan will remove all those restrictions.