The Colombia Three should give themselves up by walking into their local garda station, the Tanaiste Mary Harney said today.
Ms Harney, who is acting Minister for Justice while Michael McDowell is on holiday, also called on the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to help find the alleged IRA members who unexpectedly appeared in the Republic last week after eight months on the run from 17-year jail terms handed down by Colombian courts for training rebels.
Mary Harney
Ms Harney said gardaí were looking for them but were unable to find them yet. "I've heard them [the Colombia Three] say that they're not on the run. Those who know where they are, including Mr Adams I'm sure, should co-operate.
"The gardaí are using every avenue open to them to establish where these men are, that is my understanding. I don't see why they wouldn't go to their local garda station."
Ms Harney said the men could face charges in Irish courts over their re-appearance in this country.
"Clearly if somebody travelled on fraudulently-obtained documentation, that is an offence under Irish law certainly," she said. "I'm extraordinarily concerned how they got back into the country. The fight against international terrorism is something we all have a huge role to play in.
We just have to look at what happened in London and Egypt and Turkey in recent weeks."
She said it was extraordinary that they were able to return to Ireland given that there are no direct flights to Colombia and there so many countries had arrest warrants in their names.
The Colombian government welcomed Ireland's proposal to imprison the men in Irish jails as positive but said it still wants the men extradited.
"This is where they caused the pain," said vice-president Francisco Santos. "This is where they left us with a problem in which many, many Colombians have been killed, where the use of explosives has been developed immensely ... due to their technique and expertise and this is where they should pay their sentence.
"The constructive engagement that is in that proposal is positive in terms of finding a way to solve this problem," he told RTE Radio.
He said that any reluctance to send the men back due to Colombia's human rights record was "just smoke and mirrors."
Mr Santos said the men were "treated a lot better than most prisoners" and he had personally met the Bring Them Home campaign at least twice but never heard from the campaign nor its lawyers when the men skipped bail in December.
Last December an appeal court in Colombia reversed an original acquittal and sentenced the men to 17 years in prison for training FARC guerillas in urban terrorist techniques.
The trio were arrested at Bogota's El Dorado Airport in August 2001 as they boarded a flight out of the country.
Ms Harney said it was laughable to suggest that the men were in Colombia to observe its peace process. "These three individuals were no ordinary tourists visiting Colombia and justice must be seen to be done. We know that much of the cocaine in the US and elsewhere comes from Farc from Colombia.
"Therefore we have to take it seriously when Irish citizens are involved in assisting an organisation whose raison d'etre is terrorism. It brings home to us how Sinn Fein sought to globalise or franchise terrorism."