IRA must disband, Britain and US insist

BELFAST - Outraged by an IRA offer to shoot a group of suspected murderers, Britain and the United States said today the guerrilla group must disband and called on its political ally Sinn Fein to renounce criminality.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the offer defied description while the US special envoy to Northern Ireland declared: "it's time for the IRA to go out of business."

Their condemnation came as the family of Robert McCartney, fatally stabbed by a gang including IRA members after a bar fight in January, said fear of retribution was still preventing witnesses from going to the police.

"There were 70 people in the bar ... no one has come forward with anything to the police that they can act upon," his sister Catherine told reporters.

Police arrested a man over the crime after he voluntarily went to a police station with his lawyer, but they later released him without charge pending further enquiries.

Local media said he was one of three people expelled from the IRA over McCartney's killing.

Ten people have previously been arrested and released without charge over the murder of the father-of-two.

The McCartney family has mounted a highly effective campaign for the killers to be brought to justice, accusing the IRA of intimidating witnesses and cleaning the bar of evidence.

But potentially the biggest loser in the furore over the murder and a huge bank robbery blamed on the IRA is Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland's largest Catholic nationalist party, which has been widely condemned for failing to distance itself from the IRA.

Its critics say the idea of a political party with what many regard as effectively an armed wing is increasingly unacceptable in a 21st century democracy.

Tuesday's demands from Blair and President George W Bush's special envoy to the British-ruled province, Mitchell Reiss, are yet more blows to its democratic credentials.

"It's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated," Reiss told BBC radio. "You can't sign up for the rule of law a la carte."

London and Dublin say there can be no progress on restoring the province's regional government -- set up under a 1998 peace deal to share power between divided Protestants and Catholics -- until the issue of IRA criminality is resolved.

Home rule was suspended in 2002 when Protestant unionists, who support ties to Britain, said they would no longer sit in government with Sinn Fein until the IRA got rid of the weapons which sustained its three-decade campaign against British rule.

Blair condemned the republican movement - the IRA and Sinn Fein - in his weekly questions session in Britain's parliament.

"The IRA statement yesterday frankly defies any description, it was a quite extraordinary thing to say," he told legislators.

"There is a stark choice facing republicanism. They can either embrace the democratic and peaceful route or be excluded from the political process."

In a statement to the media on Tuesday, the IRA said it had gone to McCartney's five sisters and fiancee and offered to shoot those responsible for his death, but that the family had insisted they wanted the perpetrators brought to court.

Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness said it would have been "very unfortunate" if the IRA had shot anyone, but party colleague Gerry Kelly insisted the statement was positive.

"Yesterday's IRA statement should have removed concerns witnesses might still have had about coming forward," he said.

- REUTERS