Despite ceasefire, IRA still clouds N. Irish peace

Police allegations that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was behind a massive bank robbery in Northern Ireland have once again thrust the guerilla group into the centre of a political crisis.

Yesterday, the British province's police chief Hugh Orde said he believed the republican paramilitary group carried out a pre-Christmas raid on the vaults of Northern Bank's headquarters in central Belfast, netting £26.5 million.

If confirmed, this would mean that while the leaders of the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein were negotiating over the province's future, the hard men of the organisation were plotting one of the biggest heists in UK history.

It is not the first time that alleged IRA activities have thrown into chaos efforts to bring political stability to the bitterly divided province as it emerges from a three-decade sectarian conflict which claimed more than 3,600 lives.

The paramilitary IRA, which draws its support from the province's Catholic minority, called a ceasefire in its campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland in 1997 and since then has refrained from attacking troops or police.

A year later the province's rival Catholic and Protestant leaders signed the landmark Good Friday Agreement aimed at creating a power-sharing government in Belfast.

While the guns have stayed largely silent the political process has lurched from crisis to crisis, the pro-British Protestant unionists constantly pointing to alleged IRA transgressions to question Sinn Fein's fitness for office.

Sinn Fein in turn has often accused the mainly Protestant Northern Ireland police of bias against Catholics, and yesteray said Mr Orde's allegations were politically motivated.

In 2000, as unionists demanded the IRA disarm if Sinn Fein was to be allowed to sit in government, four people were jailed by a Florida court for buying and illegally shipping arms to the IRA through the US mail.

In August 2001 three Irishmen were arrested in Colombia, accused of selling the IRA's deadly expertise in making car bombs and mortars to Marxist FARC guerillas.

They were initially cleared of the most serious charges, but convicted on appeal by a Bogota court last month and sentenced to 17 years in prison. The trio are now on the run.

On St Patrick's Day in 2002 documents were stolen when a gang broke into the offices of an intelligence unit at the heavily fortified Castlereagh police station in east Belfast.

Police blamed the IRA, and said police raids in the group's west Belfast heartland had recovered a "hit list" that included the names of senior British politicians.

A further blow came in October that year when police raided the offices of Sinn Fein at the power-sharing assembly set up by the 1998 deal. They accused the guerillas of using the party's foothold in government as cover for a spying operation.

Unionists said they would not share power with Sinn Fein until the IRA effectively disbanded, and Britain suspended power-sharing and reimposed direct rule from London.