U.S. envoy says time for IRA to 'go out of business'

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- President Bush's envoy to Northern Ireland called Wednesday for the IRA to disband after the outlawed group made an unprecedented public offer to kill four men -- including two of its own expelled members -- linked to a Belfast slaying.\nThe envoy, Mitchell Reiss, told BBC radio in Belfast that the IRA's allied Sinn Fein party should accept the legitimacy of the police force.\n"It's time for the IRA to go out of business. And it's time for Sinn Fein to be able to say that explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated," Reiss told the BBC in the interview from Washington.\nThe Irish Republican Army, which is supposed to be observing a 1997 cease-fire in support of Northern Ireland's peace process, has faced weeks of embarrassment over its members' role in killing a Catholic civilian, intimidating witnesses and destroying evidence. The case highlights the IRA's decades-old practice of seeking to impose its authority on the most hard-line Catholic parts of Northern Ireland.\nThe victim's family, which lives in an IRA power base in east Belfast, has waged a rare public campaign demanding that the IRA acknowledge its involvement in killing Robert McCartney, 33, and encouraging witnesses to give evidence to police.\nThe McCartneys' stand has forced the IRA to make a string of admissions, culminating in Tuesday night's declaration it had offered to kill four people the IRA blames for the Jan. 30 killing outside a Belfast pub.\n"The IRA representatives detailed the outcome of the internal disciplinary proceedings thus far and stated in clear terms that the IRA was prepared to shoot the people directly involved in the killing of Robert McCartney," according to a statement from the group.\nThe McCartneys dismissed the IRA statement as irrelevant to their needs -- to get the killers and accomplices convicted in a court.\nThey also accused the IRA of continuing to understate its involvement in the crime, citing confidential witness claims that up to a dozen IRA members held the pub patrons hostage while they swabbed up evidence. McCartney was initially attacked inside the pub, then had his neck and stomach fatally slashed outside it.\n"It was that cover-up which prevented those who murdered Robert from being brought to justice," said a statement read by Claire McCartney, one of his sisters.\nThe British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, both denounced the IRA's offer as bizarre.\n"It's an extraordinary statement and a shock to the system," Ahern said in Dublin.\nReiss specifically chided Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams for his remarks during his speech Saturday to the party's annual conference. Adams, reflecting traditional IRA-Sinn Fein policy, claimed the movement wouldn't tolerate criminals in its ranks. He immediately qualified that position, arguing that the IRA wasn't committing crimes when it broke laws "in pursuit of legitimate political objectives."\nAnalysts say that view justifies virtually all of the IRA's activities, including its robberies, fuel smuggling and policy of maiming petty criminals within the IRA's Catholic power bases.\nReiss said he found that comment "particularly worrisome. ... You can't sign up for the rule of law a la carte."\nAhern said the IRA had a history of using death threats as a way of maintaining order. "But when you actually see it in written form ... it's horrific," he said.\n"The IRA statement yesterday frankly defies any description," Blair told the House of Commons in London.\nBlair said the IRA had revealed why both governments and every other political party in both parts of Ireland were demanding the IRA fully disarm and disband.\n"We have made considerable progress in Northern Ireland," he said, referring to the peace process and the Good Friday peace pact of 1998. "But we now have an impasse because of the refusal of the IRA to give up violent activity of whatever sort"