The IRA laughs all the way to and from the bank

[emad]

Sunday Times
The £22m heist shows that terrorists should not be allowed a part in government, says David Burnside



My hope for Ulster in 2005: please, prime minister, no more peace summits. No more Weston Parks; no more Leeds Castles. Even the dogs in the street know that the republican movement carried out Britain’s biggest bank robbery, proving yet again its unfitness for a share in civil, democratic government.

Seven years after the Belfast agreement was signed, supposedly to replace political terrorism with a commitment by all to democracy, IRA/Sinn Fein retains its terrorist machine and the hard old men of the Provos are still up to their necks in crime. We are not talking about some splinter group. This is Sinn Fein lying through its teeth behind the Gerry Adams smile, pretending it has no links with the IRA.

The republican movement’s refusal to operate as a “normal” political party is increasingly contaminating politics in Ulster and the Irish republic. Adams, Martin McGuinness et al say on Today or on Newsnight that Sinn Fein cannot speak for the IRA and there is no follow-up question, so absolute is the liberal media’s collusion in this great lie.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland has no other line of inquiry into the £22m Northern Bank heist but mainstream republicans — which means the Provisional IRA. And who do they have links with? Is Sinn Fein to be punished, to be excluded or expelled from the political process? The answer is no because Tony Blair’s door remains open to Adams and McGuinness.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1422286,00.html