RUC says ceasefire opponents may join forces in violence

The RUC Chief Constable, Mr Ronnie Flanagan, has warned that republican groups opposed to the IRA ceasefire and the Belfast Agreement may be preparing to coalesce into a single paramilitary organisation. Mr Flanagan also condemned Saturday's rioting on the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown, claiming that it was "clearly orchestrated".

While local nationalists, including Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, of the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, denied the charge, Mr Flanagan said that the "wanton violence" must have been planned in advance. Petrol bombs and blast bombs used could not have been manufactured spontaneously, he said.

He agreed that the violence in Portadown did not augur well for the rest of the marching season. He said his intelligence information confirmed press reports that three republican dissident groups, the INLA, Continuity IRA and Real IRA, may be about to align under one central command.

The London Observer reported yesterday that the three groups had recently met in Dundalk to discuss uniting under a single command. They had agreed to increase co-operation and to pass bomb-making materials to each other, according to the newspaper.

Mr Flanagan said yesterday: "I think there is intelligence to indicate a coalescence, if you like, of dissident groups, and they pose a real threat."

However, he added that the Garda Siochana had had "tremendous success" in acting against dissident republican groups. The RUC and the Garda would continue to work to locate and destroy arms dumps. However, the decommissioning issue was a political matter.

Mr Flanagan welcomed the Commission on Policing, to be headed by the former Hong Kong governor and junior Northern Ireland minister, Mr Chris Patten.

"Anything that can be done to improve the policing service that we deliver to all the people of Northern Ireland, I very much welcome. I have always said that policing is much too important, and has much too much impact on everybody's life, to be left to the police alone", he added.

Meanwhile, a Sinn Fein councillor, Mr Alex Maskey, warned that the Commission on Policing would have to be truly independent and not made up of members "connected to the RUC or unionism". Commenting on an Ireland on Sunday report that the British government intended appointing "yes men" to the commission, Mr Maskey said that the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, had "a responsibility to appoint a panel which is seen to be independent and unbiased". He added: "ein has made its position very clear. Any commission into the future of policing must be about fundamental change. In short, the RUC are unacceptable to the nationalist community. They must be disbanded."

The Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, said that the violence in Portadown had been orchestrated and was a clear signal that the republican movement was going to use this summer to cause violence.