U.S. Envoy Calls for IRA to Disband

In the wake of an Irish Republican Army offer to shoot four suspects in a man’s slaying, the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland said Wednesday that the outlawed group must disband.

Special envoy Mitchell B. Reiss said: “It’s time for the IRA to go out of business. And it’s time for Sinn Fein to be able to say that explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated.” Sinn Fein, Northern Ireland’s largest Catholic nationalist political party, is linked to the IRA.

Reiss particularly questioned Sinn Fein’s claim that most IRA activities, including robbing banks and shooting petty criminals in the limbs, shouldn’t be considered crimes. He said Sinn Fein should begin cooperating with the Northern Ireland police.

Robert McCartney, 33, was killed Jan. 30 at a Belfast pub in a Catholic neighborhood, allegedly by an IRA-led gang. The IRA men reportedly cleaned up forensic evidence, stole tapes from a surveillance camera and threatened more than 70 potential witnesses not to say anything to police.

The IRA expelled three members over the slaying and Sinn Fein suspended seven. Ten people have been arrested but released without charge.

The latest IRA statement Tuesday night said IRA representatives met twice with McCartney’s relatives and offered to shoot the men who had attacked him, an offer the family declined.

The IRA, which killed about 1,800 people from 1970 until its 1997 cease-fire, counted on support from its Catholic base as it mounted attacks on businesses, British troops and police.

But unlike most families of IRA victims within Catholic districts, the McCartneys have pursued a public campaign demanding fundamental changes from leaders of Sinn Fein and the IRA.

Chief Constable Hugh Orde, the province’s police commander, said the IRA claim to be investigating the crime was “an absurd sideshow.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the IRA’s shooting offer “frankly defies any description.”