Report Says IRA Remains Ready to Fight

The Irish Republican Army has preserved the option for violence by continuing to stockpile arms and recruit members, an international watchdog panel said Tuesday.

Protestant loyalist militias also came in for criticism by the panel for the internecine killing of four members of various factions in the last 14 months.

The report is the fifth issued by the 2-year-old Independent Monitoring Commission, set up by the British and Irish governments to keep track of paramilitary groups that were supposed to disarm under Northern Ireland’s 1998 Good Friday agreement.

It “presents a disturbing picture” of ongoing criminal activity, according to a statement by the Irish government.

The report, concluded in April but delayed so it wouldn’t affect parliamentary elections held this month, appears to provide new ammunition to Protestant loyalist politicians, including the Rev. Ian Paisley, who say the republican side has failed to live up to its obligations under the 1998 accord to disarm and disband.

The report “is a further vindication of the tough stance” of Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, said DUP official Nigel Dodds, as quoted by Britain’s Press Assn.

Republican spokesmen, however, were quoted as saying the report was little more than a recapitulation of unproven accusations. The commission itself is not impartial and “has little or no credibility,” said Alex Maskey, a former mayor of Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland.

The 59-page report asserts that the IRA is covering up the involvement of some of its members in the January slaying of Belfast resident Robert McCartney after a barroom argument. It has also smuggled in large amounts of ammunition and gets money from a string of illegal rackets, including fuel and cigarette smuggling, the report says.

Britain’s top official for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, submitting the commission’s report to Parliament, noted that “paramilitary groups continue to be active in violent and other [kinds of] crime, and none have materially wound down their capability.”

The republicans seek to unite Northern Ireland with Ireland; loyalists want the province to remain part of Britain.

Dissident republican groups “are the most committed to committing terrorism,” said Hain, referring to splinter organizations such as the Real IRA.

“Loyalist groups remain responsible for more violence,” Hain said, citing the killings between Protestant factions.

Overall, however, violence has declined, the commission said.

Referring to the IRA, also known as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the commission concluded that it was a “highly active organization.”

“We have no present evidence that it intends to resume a campaign of violence despite the collapse of political talks in December 2004, but its capacity remains should that become the intention,” the report says. “It recruits and trains new members, including in the use of firearms and explosives. It continues to gather intelligence.”

It notes that police in September discovered 10,000 rounds of IRA ammunition suited for assault rifles, apparently of recent manufacture. “This may have been only part of a larger consignment, and it demonstrates [the IRA’s] continuing efforts to maintain its preparedness,” the report says.

The organization also makes “sophisticated use of money laundering as a means of securing long-term the proceeds of serious crime,” said the panel, whose four members are Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the CIA; John Grieve, a British former anti-terrorism chief; Joe Brosnan, a retired Irish civil servant; and John Alderdice, former leader of the pan-sectarian Alliance Party in Belfast.

The report cements an impression that prospects for compromise are receding in Northern Ireland, Paul Bew, a historian at Queen’s University in Belfast, said in a telephone interview.

He noted that there had been a distinct hardening of position among the Democratic Unionists in recent days and that Paisley was now talking not only about seeking the decommissioning of IRA weapons, but demanding that the IRA disband.

“What you get is the DUP ... being tougher about what the IRA has to do. I think that is a big, big problem here,” Bew said.

Tim Pat Coogan, Dublin-based author of “The IRA,” a history of the armed movement, also sees the chances for a breakthrough receding.

“The good news is that I don’t think there is any will in the province anywhere for a return to violence. The bad news is I don’t see any sign of the IRA going away for the foreseeable future.”

Although the IRA has generally observed a cease-fire since 1997, more than 3,000 people died in the three decades before that.

Coogan said a risk exists as long as no political settlement is reached. “You can’t have a vacuum indefinitely,” he said. “It’s not what you’d call a normal society....

“The north of Ireland has a lot of options, but cheerful is not one of them,” he concluded. “They don’t do cheer up there.”

Times staff writer Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.