IRA accuses unionists of obstructing accord

The IRA has accused the unionist political leadership of seeking to erode the Belfast Agreement. In an implied reference to the unionist demand for prior decommissioning it stated that "old preconditions collapsed" the previous IRA ceasefire of 1994.

The IRA in its New Year statement which appears in today's An Phoblacht, said it was approaching the New Year with confidence but conscious of the failure so far of the Belfast Agreement to deliver meaningful change.

It was clear from the statement that the failure of Sinn Fein to gain places on the executive, and other elements of the agreement are seriously occupying the IRA. Many nationalists were now asking whether the British government would again "succumb to the unionist veto", it said.

"Those same unionist politicians who signed up to the Good Friday document in April last have expended all their energy since in a gradual intensification of their attempts to obstruct its implementation and negate its potential."

Implicitly referring to decommissioning, it said: "Their attempts to resurrect old preconditions which collapsed a previous opportunity to secure a lasting settlement are designed to block progress rather than expedite it.

"The motivation of those engaged in these attempts is nowhere better demonstrated than in their active approval of the Orange Order siege of the nationalist community on Garvaghy Road . . . The unionist leadership, it would appear, remains wedded to the politics of domination and inequality and is opposed to a democratic peace settlement."

It added that the IRA called a ceasefire in 1994 to facilitate a durable peace settlement. But "the British government and the unionists, in both blocking and refusing to embrace forward political movement, undermined the potential for achieving such a settlement, and eventually forced the ending of that cessation".

It said that despite the "continuing political vacuum" the challenge remained to remove the causes of conflict.

There has been widespread condemnation of two so-called punishment attacks in which four people were injured. Loyalist and republican paramilitaries have been blamed for the attacks, in Antrim and Belfast on Tuesday. The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said there had to be a "more progressive and humane way to respond to social delinquency and even to criminal activity".