Post by earl on May 14, 2008 15:42:43 GMT
DUBLIN, Ireland: The British government said Wednesday it will recognize the validity of a cease-fire announced by the Ulster Volunteer Force, hoping it will encourage the Protestant paramilitary group to further commit to peace and surrender weapons.
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward also said Britain will recognize and outlaw a new IRA splinter gang trying to recruit in hard-line Catholic areas. He said it would become an imprisonable offense to be a member of the group, Oglaith na hEireann — Gaelic for "Army of Ireland."
IRA dissidents represent the major threat to peace in Northern Ireland, which is trying to leave behind decades of paramilitary bloodshed in line with its decade-old peace accord. No group has claimed responsibility for the latest dissident attack, a booby-trap bomb Monday that wounded a police officer as he was driving to work.
Oglaith na hEireann, which is pronounced "ogla na erin," joins a confusing panoply of similarly named organizations, legal and illegal.
The official army of the Republic of Ireland uses the Gaelic name, as does every faction of Irish republican outlaws: the dominant Provisional IRA and two other splinter gangs, the Real IRA and Continuity IRA. All of the dissident groups reject the Provisionals' 2005 decision to renounce violence and disarm.
Woodward said Britain was declaring Oglaith na hEireann illegal after police and international experts ruled that the new dissident gang was separate from the Real and Continuity factions. They have blamed Oglaith na hEireann for killing one of its own members in February and dumping his body near a Catholic church.
Woodward said his government accepts that the Ulster Volunteer Force has maintained a peaceful stance over the past year. He said Britain would recognize its cease-fire, just as it recognizes the truces of the Provisional IRA and Northern Ireland's largest Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association.
British recognition of the cease-fire means the UVF and its fringe political party, the Progressive Unionists, can benefit from extra state funding and easier prisoner paroles.
Progressive Unionist leader Dawn Purvis welcomed the British move as "further evidence of Northern Ireland's strides towards normality."
Britain withdrew recognition of the UVF truce in September 2005 after the group killed four people in a feud with a rival Protestant paramilitary group. Police also accused UVF leaders of stoking riots in Belfast that month in a failed effort to force authorities to permit a Protestant parade past a Catholic neighborhood.
In May 2007, the UVF announced it had renounced the use of violence for political purposes. UVF founder Gusty Spence, who made the declaration, said the group had ceased recruiting, training and gathering intelligence on potential targets, and had stored its weapons "beyond reach" of rank-and-file members.
That latter move fell short of a central demand of Northern Ireland's Good Friday peace accord of 1998, which called on all paramilitary groups to disarm. The UVF has refused to hand any weapons to international disarmament officials, as the IRA did from 2001 to 2005, arguing that it must remain armed in case IRA dissidents grow into a more serious threat.
UVF members killed more than 400 Catholic civilians from 1966 to 1994, the year the group called an open-ended truce. The group claimed to be targeting IRA members, but usually picked victims simply because they were Catholics, the IRA's support base.
The UVF claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack of the entire Northern Ireland conflict: killing 33 people with four nearly simultaneous car bombs in the Republic of Ireland on May 17, 1974.
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward also said Britain will recognize and outlaw a new IRA splinter gang trying to recruit in hard-line Catholic areas. He said it would become an imprisonable offense to be a member of the group, Oglaith na hEireann — Gaelic for "Army of Ireland."
IRA dissidents represent the major threat to peace in Northern Ireland, which is trying to leave behind decades of paramilitary bloodshed in line with its decade-old peace accord. No group has claimed responsibility for the latest dissident attack, a booby-trap bomb Monday that wounded a police officer as he was driving to work.
Oglaith na hEireann, which is pronounced "ogla na erin," joins a confusing panoply of similarly named organizations, legal and illegal.
The official army of the Republic of Ireland uses the Gaelic name, as does every faction of Irish republican outlaws: the dominant Provisional IRA and two other splinter gangs, the Real IRA and Continuity IRA. All of the dissident groups reject the Provisionals' 2005 decision to renounce violence and disarm.
Woodward said Britain was declaring Oglaith na hEireann illegal after police and international experts ruled that the new dissident gang was separate from the Real and Continuity factions. They have blamed Oglaith na hEireann for killing one of its own members in February and dumping his body near a Catholic church.
Woodward said his government accepts that the Ulster Volunteer Force has maintained a peaceful stance over the past year. He said Britain would recognize its cease-fire, just as it recognizes the truces of the Provisional IRA and Northern Ireland's largest Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association.
British recognition of the cease-fire means the UVF and its fringe political party, the Progressive Unionists, can benefit from extra state funding and easier prisoner paroles.
Progressive Unionist leader Dawn Purvis welcomed the British move as "further evidence of Northern Ireland's strides towards normality."
Britain withdrew recognition of the UVF truce in September 2005 after the group killed four people in a feud with a rival Protestant paramilitary group. Police also accused UVF leaders of stoking riots in Belfast that month in a failed effort to force authorities to permit a Protestant parade past a Catholic neighborhood.
In May 2007, the UVF announced it had renounced the use of violence for political purposes. UVF founder Gusty Spence, who made the declaration, said the group had ceased recruiting, training and gathering intelligence on potential targets, and had stored its weapons "beyond reach" of rank-and-file members.
That latter move fell short of a central demand of Northern Ireland's Good Friday peace accord of 1998, which called on all paramilitary groups to disarm. The UVF has refused to hand any weapons to international disarmament officials, as the IRA did from 2001 to 2005, arguing that it must remain armed in case IRA dissidents grow into a more serious threat.
UVF members killed more than 400 Catholic civilians from 1966 to 1994, the year the group called an open-ended truce. The group claimed to be targeting IRA members, but usually picked victims simply because they were Catholics, the IRA's support base.
The UVF claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack of the entire Northern Ireland conflict: killing 33 people with four nearly simultaneous car bombs in the Republic of Ireland on May 17, 1974.
