Bank raid "an IRA job"

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said yesterday he believed the IRA was behind the massive bank robbery in Northern Ireland last month and Sinn Fein leaders must have known about the guerilla group's plans for the raid.

Police allegations that the Irish Republican Army was behind the £26.5 million raid on Northern Bank's Belfast headquarters have undermined efforts to hand back the running of the British province to its divided Catholics and Protestants.

Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally and the largest Catholic party in Northern Ireland, has denied the IRA was behind the December 20 robbery, in which the families of two bank workers were held hostage for 24 hours, and says the accusations are politically motivated.

But Mr Ahern told Irish state broadcaster RTE "Unless somebody can show me to the contrary... this was an IRA job."

"This was a job that would have been known to the political leadership, that is my understanding. Now that makes life difficult, but do we keep going? We have to."

Attempts by London and Dublin to revive the power-sharing government at the heart of a 1998 peace deal stalled last month, blocked by a row over whether photographs could be taken of the IRA getting rid of its arms.

Northern Ireland's biggest Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists (DUP), insisted this was essential to prove the IRA was going out of business as an active paramilitary group.

The IRA, which called a ceasefire in its violent campaign against British rule in 1997, rejected the demand, saying the DUP was trying to humiliate it.