Eight men are to be killed by the IRA in the coming weeks, a human rights activist in the North has claimed.
Mr Vincent McKenna, of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau, said yesterday that the IRA in north Belfast had drawn up a list of eight alleged drug-dealers to be executed.
Mr McKenna described the source of his information as a released republican prisoner from the Ardoyne area and said the sanction for the murders had been given yesterday by IRA commanders.
"The list was drawn up on July 12th when representatives of IRA units from south Armagh, north and west Belfast met in the upstairs room of a Sinn Fein office off the Antrim Road."
A spokesman for Sinn Fein responded angrily to the claim that a Sinn Fein office was used for such a meeting. "Do you honestly want me to dignify that rubbish with a response?" he said.
Meanwhile, Mrs Bernadette McKevitt, of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, which opposed the Belfast Agreement, has said the refusal of the Way Forward proposals by Ulster Unionists should "trigger the restoration of Articles 2 and 3".
Republican Sinn Fein, also opposed to the Belfast Agreement, has called on the British government to commence the process of a "planned and orderly" withdrawal from Ireland.