Sinn Féin is organising a march and rally to Belfast City Hall next month in support of relatives of those killed as a result of collusion between British forces and loyalist paramilitaries.
Mr Gerry Adams, the party president, said yesterday the rally - planned for August 10th - would demand of the British government the truth about collusion over 30 years of conflict, and full disclosure of the activities of security and intelligence services.
He told a press conference yesterday at his party's Falls Road headquarters that hundreds of people had died. Many more were injured and maimed in what he called a campaign of state-sponsored murder.
Sitting alongside were three relatives of those who died either at the hands of loyalist paramilitaries or British security forces since 1987. Also present was Mr Mark Sykes, who was injured in the Sean Graham's bookies shootings in February 1991 in which five people died.
Mr Adams said that over 30 years' collusion "became a daily reality and resulted in some of the worst incidents of violence including the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and the reign of terror conducted by the Shankill Butchers".
Mr Adams accused the British government of a policy, introduced in the mid-1980s, which would give them greater control of loyalist death squads.
He said loyalists were armed with better weapons and sharper intelligence as a result. "British intelligence updated and organised loyalist intelligence documents to ensure that the loyalists would, in the words of British Army officer, Gordon Kerr (interviewed by the Stevens Inquiry) 'concentrate their targeting on known Provisional IRA activists'."
The Sinn Féin president further alleged that no member of the police Special Branch or British military intelligence has been indicted for collusion.
"More seriously," he continued, "this policy of collusion has never been reversed. It remains, perhaps less active but nevertheless intact today."
The agencies which enacted the policy also remain, he said. These include the Special Branch, the Force Research Unit (FRU) - now renamed the Joint Services Group - and MI5, all of which continue to act as before, he added.
He denied that collusion, as defined by Sir John Stevens in his summary of his third inquiry findings last April, was the action of rogue officers or individuals who overstepped the mark.
"It was a policy endorsed at the highest political level. The British government has never accepted its responsibility for the deaths which resulted from this policy," he said.
Mr Adams also expressed doubts that the British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair would call Assembly elections soon.
He said Mr Blair has "made a huge mistake" by ignoring appeals by the Taoiseach for an election. "He has to have an election because there's an imperative that citizens should have the right to vote and he's taken that away."