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DUBLIN - A dissident Irish Republican Army group responsible for Northern Ireland's deadliest bombing have threatened to shoot more police officers in a bid to undermine Catholic recruitment to the province's security forces.
A masked spokesman for the Real IRA splinter group handed over a videotape to Ulster Television at an undisclosed spot in rural County Tyrone, according to the TV station.
"We will continue to target (British) crown forces at a time and place of our choosing," the masked man told the station, reading from a statement.
The videotape, broadcast Monday, depicted two masked men firing an assault rifle and handgun.
It was the first public propaganda exercise by the Real IRA, which was founded in 1997 in opposition to the IRA cease-fire that year. A 1998 car bombing by the Real IRA in the town of Omagh killed 29 people, mostly women and children - the greatest single death toll during decades of bloodshed over the British territory.
The Real IRA shot and wounded two off-duty police officers in ambushes on November 8 and November 12. Both men were targeted while in their cars; one had just dropped off his son at school, while the other had just left his police base to head home.
The rising Real IRA activity comes in a year of dramatic progress in Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that represents most of the Catholic minority, in January accepted the authority of the police - a historic U-turn that spurred Protestant leaders four months later to forge a power-sharing administration with Sinn Fein. That long-implausible coalition has since been operating smoothly.
Protestant domination of Northern Ireland's government and police force spurred a Catholic civil rights movement, and the rise of a new IRA, in the late 1960s. The US-brokered Good Friday peace accord in 1998 proposed dozens of goals to promote a new Northern Ireland based on power-sharing and cooperation.
The pact's most complex goal - reforming the mostly Protestant police force into a new organisation that enjoys broad Catholic support for the first time - is running ahead of schedule. Affirmative action hiring requires at least half of recruits to be Catholic, a policy that has tripled the representation of Catholics in the ranks from 8 per cent in 2001 to 23 per cent today. The goal is 30 per cent Catholic officers by 2011.
But the continuing dissident IRA threat makes it hard for the police reform project to take root. Catholic officers still cannot live in safety in predominantly Catholic communities, restricting the potential pool of recruits.
The IRA killed nearly 300 police officers and maimed thousands during its failed 1970-1997 campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom. Most IRA members disarmed and renounced violence in 2005, but several dissident groups remain committed to insurrection.
- AP
