IRA ends bank robberies, vigilante attacks

Cigarette-smuggling likely continues Ending illegal activity crucial for peace

DUBLIN, IRELAND—

The Irish Republican Army has halted many of its underground activities — including bank robberies and vigilante attacks — and is broadly observing its July 28 peace declaration, two government officials who have read a confidential report told Associated Press. The assessment offers no firm conclusions, however, on whether the group has ended involvement in criminal rackets, which has emerged as a major new stumbling block in Northern Ireland’s peace process. The report from the Independent Monitoring Commission, a panel formed by the British and Irish governments to assess the activities of the IRA and other outlawed groups, is to be published today. The experts, who include a former CIA deputy director and an ex- commander of London’s Scotland Yard, reached broadly positive conclusions about the IRA’s recent activity, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are barred legally from revealing the report’s contents in advance of publication. However, both officials said the experts could not say for certain whether the IRA is withdrawing from many of its traditional criminal rackets, chiefly the cross- border smuggling of fuel and cigarettes. Such activity, they said, was pervasive, but difficult to pin on the IRA as an organization rather than on individual IRA members. The experts’ assessment comes just four weeks after disarmament officials announced they’d scrapped the IRA’s hidden weapons stockpiles, a goal of Northern Ireland’s 12- yearold peace process. The British and Irish governments, which formed the Independent Monitoring Commission in 2003, say they will seek to revive power- sharing negotiations in Belfast if the IRA remains dormant through January, when the commission is scheduled to publish its next, more detailed report. Northern Ireland leaders, Catholic and Protestant, said the success of the peace process depends, in part, on IRA withdrawal from all illegal activity.

“ There should be no space or excuse for continued criminal behaviour of any kind,” said Mark Durkan, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, which represents moderate Catholics. “ We want to see a credible report telling us there is no current or ongoing illegal activity from the IRA.”

At stake is the revival of the central achievement of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace deal: a Catholic-Protestant administration. A four- party coalition involving Sinn Fein, the IRAlinked party that represents most Catholics, fell apart in 2002 amid arguments over IRA weaponry and activities. Protestants insist they won’t share power again with Sinn Fein until the IRA disappears. The four members of the Independent Monitoring Commission will discuss their findings at a Dublin press conference today. The British minister responsible for governing Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, will also discuss the report at a Dublin meeting with Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern.

Officials say the report says the IRA has committed no major robberies in Northern Ireland since Dec. 20, when the group was widely blamed for the $50 million robbery of the Northern Bank in Belfast. The IRA, which never admitted involvement in crime, specifically denied carrying out that robbery. The officials said the IRA has also apparently halted, as of July, its decades-old practice of acting as a limb- breaking vigilante force in its Catholic power bases of Northern Ireland. The so- called “ punishment” attacks served both to reinforce IRA control and deter public cooperation with the mostly Protestant police. Ending such vigilante activity is considered an essential part of a major unresolved part of the 1998 peace accord: building Catholic support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland.