Irish PM backs claims bank raid 'an IRA job'

BELFAST - Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said on Sunday he believed the IRA was behind the massive bank robbery in Northern Ireland last month and Sinn Fein leaders must have known about the guerrilla group's plans for the raid.

Police allegations that the Irish Republican Army was behind the £26.5 million ($73 million) raid on Northern Bank's Belfast headquarters have undermined efforts to hand back the running of the British province to its divided Catholics and Protestants.

Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally and the largest Catholic party in Northern Ireland, has denied the IRA was behind the December 20 robbery, in which the families of two bank workers were held hostage for 24 hours, and says the accusations are politically motivated.

But Ahern told Irish state broadcaster RTE "Unless somebody can show me to the contrary ... this was an IRA job".

"This was a job that would have been known to the political leadership, that is my understanding. Now that makes life difficult, but do we keep going? We have to."

Attempts by London and Dublin to revive the power-sharing government at the heart of a 1998 peace deal stalled last month, blocked by a row over whether photographs could be taken of the IRA getting rid of its arms.

Northern Ireland's biggest Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists (DUP), insisted this was essential to prove the IRA was going out of business as an active paramilitary group.

The IRA, which called a ceasefire in its violent campaign against British rule in 1997, rejected the demand, saying the DUP was trying to humiliate it.

All sides agree that after Friday's assessment by Northern Ireland's police chief, Hugh Orde, that the IRA was behind the Northern Bank heist, there is little chance of a deal being struck between Sinn Fein and the DUP any time soon.

Sinn Fein, which accuses the mainly Protestant police force of bias against Catholics, says it is the victim of a smear by elements of the British authorities hostile to republicans.

"It is a disgrace that the Irish government and most of the media have accepted without question the opinion of Hugh Orde," said Caoimhghin O Caolain, a Sinn Fein member of the Irish parliament. "(Orde) has produced not a scintilla of evidence to back his allegation."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Protestant unionists, who support Northern Ireland's ties to Britain, were justified in refusing to share power with Sinn Fein while the IRA remained involved in criminality and low-level violence.

"I think it is still possible to make progress," he told BBC television. "But it can't be 99 per cent giving up violence and it certainly can't be 80 per cent giving up violence, it's got to be 100 per cent."

No one has yet been arrested or charged over the robbery.

- REUTERS