Leak of PSNI briefing 'disappointing', says Rea

The vast majority of the North's policing board will be "disappointed" that a briefing by a senior PSNI officer to the board was leaked to the media, its chairman said today.

Professor Desmond Rea said yesterday's briefing by Police Service Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kinkaid was one of a series of briefings the board has received on organised crime.

Asst Chief Constable Kinkaid is understood to have told members of the Policing Board at a private meeting in Belfast that the Provisional IRA had still not ceased all criminal activity.

British minister Shaun Woodward is is understood to have told the same meeting that he still believed IRA criminality had ended, even if individual former members were involved in some activities.

In a statement this afternoon, Prof Rea said by definition the meeting was private and confidential.

"If the initial breach of confidentiality in respect of yesterday's briefing emanated from a member of this board, I have no doubt that the vast majority of the Board will be disappointed to say the least.

Assembly member Ian Paisley jnr, the Democratic Unionist Party security spokesman and also a member of the Policing Board, said there had been astonishment around the table when Mr Kinkaid made his comments because it was so at variance with what Mr Woodward had been saying publicly.

He called for Mr Woodward to resign as Security minister in the wake of the revelations. He said: "The information which Shaun Woodward received was exactly the same as the Policing Board and from the same source yet the interpretation he has put on it is completely and unjustifiably different."

Mr Paisley added: "When you have no confidence in a person's judgment there is only one place for them to go and that is away from here."

The Independent Monitoring Commission is due to report before the end of the month on whether the IRA has been inactive or not.

The British government is anxious for them to be given a clean bill of health and use that to kick-start a fresh push at a political settlement and the restoration of a devolved power-sharing administration at Stormont.

The DUP is already insisting there is not prospect of them going into government with Sinn Fein until they are convinced the IRA has stood down. Mr Kinkaid's words will have come as a total justification to the DUP.

A spokesman for the Northern Ireland Office said they respected the confidentiality of the briefing to the Policing Board. He added: "It is for the Independent Monitoring Commission to comment on this issue and their next report is due very shortly."

Sinn Féin was swift to dismiss ACC Kinkaid's comments as "a blatant example of political policing".

The party's policing spokesman, North Belfast Assembly member Gerry Kelly said it was the latest in a series of serious efforts by anti-Republican elements to hold up progress in the peace process.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan said the problem had been that the minister had tried to anticipate the IMC report, but he urged all sides to wait until the Commission published its findings.

"Part of the difficulty has been that Shaun Woodward has tried as a minister to overspin and almost anticipate what the IMC are likely to report," the Foyle MP said.

"I think we should wait and see. People can have differences of interpretation, different emphases. It might be that everything the police are saying is not being fully passed on. It might be that MI5 are offering different briefings for their own purposes.