British, Irish: IRA pulled heist

Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Paul Murphy, and Ireland’s minister for foreign affairs, Dermot Ahern, said after their first meeting since the bank heist on Monday that the prospect of reviving devolved government had been dealt a blow.
Ahern said evasion and denial by republicans was increasing the gulf of mistrust and that confidence in the political process has taken a major hit as a result of the robbery. He said, however, that both governments remained firmly committed to the process but are very unlikely to achieve that in the near future.
“The world has changed on how we deal with the process now,” said Murphy, who, with Ahern, is to meet all the political parties in coming days. The taoiseach is expected to meet Sinn Fein on his return from a trade mission to China next week.
Questioned about reports of impending financial sanctions against Sinn Fein, or the creation of a Stormont “scrutiny committee” that would not include the party, Murphy said he was still considering his options.
At the weekend, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness said if the IRA had been involved in that robbery then that “would have been a defining moment” in Sinn Fein’s leadership’s work with the IRA.
“I would not have stood for it,” he said. “It would have been totally and absolutely unacceptable to me.”
No one in the Sinn Fein leadership had any advance knowledge of the raid, he said, adding he didn’t see how it could have been in the interests of the IRA “to be involved in such a risky operation, which would have undermined the republican contribution.”
Speaking at Stormont on Monday, however, the DUP leader, the Rev. Ian Paisley, said this was not a time for London “to continue negotiations with IRA/SF.”
“This is the time for them to give IRA/SF an ultimatum,” paisley said. “This means that IRA/SF as a terrorist army ceases to exist. Further, the criminal structures of IRA/SF must be totally dismantled and proof of this must be demonstrated, without question, over a substantial period of time.”
His son, Ian Paisley Jr., said: “The secretary of state has confirmed that he is 100 percent sure that the IRA did the crime, yet he is dilatory when it comes to sanctioning Sinn Fein. There must be a swift and certain sanction against the men of violence.”
Meanwhile, rifts have appeared within the SDLP over whether the party should agree to share power with unionists to the exclusion of Sinn Fein. On Saturday, the SDLP MP for South Down, Eddie McGrady, said his party should examine all its options.
Nationalist voters had been “betrayed” by the IRA, he said, referring to Sinn Fein leaders as “the IRA in lounge suits.”
“If they [Sinn Fein] want to exclude themselves by their extremism, there is very little you can do about it,” McGrady added:
McGrady’s Sinn Fein rival for the South Down Westminster constituency, Caitriona Ruane, said, “McGrady very clearly indicates that the SDLP are considering running with the DUP proposal for excluding the majority of nationalist opinion.”
But in response, the SDLP leader, Mark Durkan, said his party did not “have to line up behind the DUP or Sinn Fein.
“We are lined up, as we always have been, behind the Good Friday agreement,” he said. “We would not go into coalition with the DUP as a partner. And we would not do so on the basis of the flawed deal that the DUP negotiated with Sinn Fein in December.
“People who think that voluntary coalition is a simple option would need to get wise.”
Durkan added: “Sinn Fein have a credibility problem. They are not just disputing Hugh Orde, they are disputing the taoiseach and Irish government intelligence. Both governments have reiterated their total belief that it was an IRA robbery. Nationalists feel betrayed by the IRA raid. They voted for peace, not for armed robberies and evasive answers from Sinn Fein.”