Following the announcement by Northern Secretary of State Theresa Villiers that the British government has commissioned an independent assessment of paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, the DUP has agreed to participate in multiparty talks at Stormont next week.
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Welfare reformTraditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister said the “panel must show that they are totally independent and are prepared to face the reality of ongoing IRA criminality, regardless of its impact upon the terrorist inclusive executive”.
Protestant leaders are threatening to end cooperation with the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party because of police assessments that IRA members killed a former Belfast comrade last month.
Sinn Fein’s hopes of becoming the latest European anti-austerity party to break into power will be tested in the coming weeks as it struggles to save Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government from collapse. “So I think serious questions have to be asked about whose agenda was served by those murders, particularly as we all know that the prospect that agents were involved, people who are hostile to the peace process, who are hostile to Sinn Fein’s involvement in the political institutions”.
Kevin McGuigan, 53, was shot dead in a suspected revenge attack for the murder of his one-time associate and IRA commander Gerard “Jock” Davison, 47, three months earlier.
He warned a “huge responsibility” rested on the five parties in the coalition Executive in Belfast and the British and Irish governments to push themselves to find a resolution. We said we would not engage in knee jerk reactions but rather would deal with the outstanding issues in a strategic manner.
All parties “must deal with continued activity by paramilitary organizations” Villiers said, adding that they were “dealing with very hard issues”.
The three experts are set to assess information held by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), National Crime Agency (NCA) and Security Services in coming to a determination.
Prior to the McGuigan murder, the future viability of the administration had already been in doubt as a outcome of long-standing budgetary disputes, with the row over the non-implementation of the UK Government’s welfare reforms the most vexed.
A Downing Street spokesman said; “The Prime Minister is gravely concerned about the situation in Northern Ireland following developments there today”.
“The first few days make me think that the parties are looking at this with seriousness”, she said.
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“Lastly, I am planning to discuss with the Northern Ireland justice minister and the Irish justice minister how we can work best together in our efforts to tackle cross-border crime”.
