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Belfast Telegraph Home > News

IMC all-clear to IRA but UVF criticised


By Chris Thornton
19 October 2005

The IRA was being given its first all-clear from sinister activity today, but the UVF received more stinging criticism in the Independent Monitoring Commission's seventh report.

The report, due to be released before lunchtime, confirms early suggestions that throughout August the IRA kept to its pledge to end all activity.

But it describes the UVF as a dangerous organisation that has been involved in murder and other violence during the summer.

The report highlights UVF attacks during its feud with the LVF - a period in which the Government ignored an IMC recommendation to stop Assembly funding for the UVF associates in the PUP.

Funding for Sinn Fein was stopped at the same time because of IRA activity like the Northern Bank robbery.

Secretary of State, Peter Hain, and Irish Foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern, were due to meet in Dublin today to consider the report, which was handed to both governments on Friday.

The IMC report looks at paramilitary activity from March 1 to August 31.

According to well-placed sources, the report says that there was no IRA activity after the group's July 28 announcement that its armed campaign had ended.

That includes an end to punishment beatings and shootings, intelligence gathering and targeting of the security forces.

Earlier this month, Mr Hain reported that intelligence agencies were telling him that the IRA was sticking to its pledge.

The report will help fuel Ministers' hopes of bringing the DUP and Sinn Fein together in a Stormont government next year.

But the next report from the IMC - due in January - is considered more significant, since it will cover a greater period in which the IRA is expected to show no signs of activity.

The current report does not cover September, when the IRA carried out its major act of decommissioning.

The UVF feud with the LVF has entered a lull or has ended over the past few weeks, but the report released today concentrates on the violence over the summer.

Sinn Fein said the Government's decision to continue payments to the PUP demonstrated that the Government views the body as a tool to be used primarily against republicans.
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