The British government has been "selling the lie" that the Belfast Agreement has brought relative peace to Northern Ireland despite official figures showing increases in various forms of violence, Democratic Unionist leader the Rev Ian Paisley said today.
Dr Paisley and several of his colleagues spent more than an hour in Downing Street this afternoon discussing the state of the peace process and the various paramilitary ceasefires.
Afterwards Dr Paisley told reporters that he had shown Mr Tony Blair police figures demonstrating that between 1995 and 1998 there were 450 shootings in the North, but between 1999 and 2002 the figure had grown to 820.
Similarly, bombings totalled 123 between 1995 and 1998 but increased to 561 between 1999 and 2002.
Dr Paisley, who also met Northern Ireland Secretary Dr John Reid in London, said: "We are glad that the Secretary of State agreed there was a rising tide of violence and violent crime in Northern Ireland since the agreement was signed.
"The Prime Minister said he would have to take these figures away and look carefully at them because this was a serious matter.
"The [British] government has been selling the lie that we have peace as a result of the agreement, but that is not so when we come to the figures issued by the police."
Dr Paisley said he would be having a further meeting with Dr Reid to discuss the personal security of prominent people in the party as well as other public figures following recent intelligence about an increased threat.
Dr Reid told reporters that while he acknowledged that the figures quoted by Dr Paisley were disturbing, they did not provide the full picture.
"Dr Paisley raised some figures out of police reports that had come out over the past three years.
"For the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, life has got better. But there are areas - in the localities and some of the areas of Belfast - where things have got much worse, and overall there are some worrying signs, particularly in terms of sectarian attacks and bombings and so on."
But Dr Reid argued that the attacks were being carried out by people who wanted to bring down the agreement and warned: "We must not allow that to happen."
Dr Reid said that although intelligence had suggested at one point that there might be an increased threat to members of Dr Paisley's party, it later became clear that was not the case.
"I was able to assure Dr Paisley and his party of that today."
PA