Cowen will not be drawn on any IRA gesture

The Minister for Foreign Affairs has refused to be drawn on whether the IRA will make a gesture today to help restore devolution in the North.

Mr Cowen said he could not pre-empt or preface the outcome of discussions which were not yet in the public domain, although they would be shortly.

"The purpose of the detailed and intensive set of discussions and negotiations over the past five months has been to bring about a situation where the full, final and faithful implementation of the agreement is set out in detail by both governments, and where acts of completion, as envisaged in the Taoiseach's and the Prime Minister's statements last October, are brought about.

"In that context, we want to see those acts of completion which give sufficient confidence and trust to the process; that we can move in due course from a peace process to a peace settlement.

"From the Government's point of view, that work continues as we speak."

The Minister was replying to the Fine Gael spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell, who asked if there would be a "radical IRA move" signalling its complete cessation as an active paramilitary organisation following today's meeting.

He also asked if the Minister accepted that in a normalised society there was no place for self-appointed vigilantes administering their own "perverted forms of justice, whether they are so-called loyalist or republican movements".

Mr Cowen said vigilante practices were no characteristic of a normalised society, and had no place in such a society.

Earlier, the Minister said the Government had consistently condemned the practice of paramilitary "exiling" of people from their place of residence as an abuse of human rights.

"The right of all citizens to freely choose where they wish to live is a fundamental right which has been recognised in the Good Friday agreement.

"The breaching of this right by paramilitary groups is abhorrent and unjustifiable. I have frequently called on all political parties associated with paramilitary organisations to make every effort to get those organisations to desist and to ensure that all 'exiles', wherever they currently reside, can safely return to their homes."

He added that the demand that such activity should cease applied to all paramilitary groups.