Maginnis calls apparent `de facto' ceasefire an insult to nationalists

AN apparent "de facto" IRA ceasefire in the North is an offence to unionists and a blatant insult to nationalists, according to the UUP's security spokesman, Mr Ken Maginnis.

Claiming he had predicted such a move months ago, Mr Maginnis said it was a transparently bogus tactic which must be taken alongside Mr Gerry Adams's comment that the IRA "haven't gone away, you know".

Sinn Fein had once again been given "a mandate by its terrorist activists to try to fool the nationalist electorate", but the attempt would fail, ha predicted.

"The idea that Ulster man and woman will tolerate even the prospect of further economic and social terrorism in Great Britain, and the inevitable loyalist backlash against the Republic's economy, in order to grasp at some imaginary straw of hope that the IRA is sincere, is an illusion."

He was confident whichever party formed the new British government would be able to judge from "the betrayal of Hume, the Kennedys and Clinton, and the defiance of the Papal plea at Knock that any attempt to do business with the IRA is doomed to failure".

Sinn Fein also came under attack from the SDLP's Mr Eddie McGrady, who said the party's election manifesto issued yesterday used "the ideas and language of the SDLP whilst playing second fiddle to the military campaign of the IRA". The real manifesto of the republican movement was its "one-sided, so-called armed struggle", he added.

The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, echoed the criticisms of the IRA tactics in the wake of the latest motorway attacks in England and called on the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, to declare he would now leave behind the "irredeemable" republican movement and enter substantive negotiations with the unionists.

But the SDLP's candidate for Mid-Ulster, Mr Denis Haughey, said Mr Trimble's call for a new assembly to be set up after the elections was evidence of his unwillingness to negotiate meaningfully. The "expensive failure" of the Forum was an example of how futile a new assembly would be.