WEDNESDAY 07/01/2004 10:01:36 By:Press Association

Paramilitary monitor set to be launched

A commission for monitoring paramilitary activity will have access to intelligence material on terror groups, it is expected to be announced today.

The commission, which is expected to formally come into being at noon, was proposed by the British and Irish governments last May in a bid to boost confidence in the Good Friday Agreement.

However it has been criticised by Sinn Fein whose Assembly Group leader Conor Murphy today again claimed that it could be used to remove parties from a devolved administration at Stormont and to subvert democracy.

The four-member commission comprises of former Northern Ireland Assembly Speaker Lord Alderdice, John Grieve who was the former head of the Metropolitan Police`s anti-terrorist squad, retired Irish civil servant Joe Brosnan and Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the CIA in the United States.

The Independent Monitoring Commission will report on IRA and loyalist paramilitary activity every six months and also scrutinise the government`s programme of scaling down the British Army presence in Northern Ireland.

It will also probe complaints about tactics used by parties to undermine stability of the political institution during devolution.

David Trimble`s Ulster Unionists have welcomed the setting up of the IMC but the Rev Ian Paisley`s Democratic Unionists, which became the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly during November`s election, has been indifferent.

The nationalist SDLP said yesterday that it believed the commission could be useful but expressed concern about proposals for excluding parties from the Government in Northern Ireland who were found to be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement.

British government sources today said they believed the setting up of the commission was significant and could have a crucial role to play regardless of whether the Assembly was functioning properly.

``The commission could put pressure on paramilitaries to live up to their commitments under the Agreement,`` the source said.

``It could put moral pressure on all sides to live up to their end of the bargain.``

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So now the Provos will be monitored, scrutinised, their every step recorded. The Special Branch have been doing that since the "Troubles" began, but the Provos are now so pacified that a public body can carry out the work that the Special Branch once had to rick lives to carry out.

And as for "pressure on paramilitaries to live up to their commitments under the Agreement"...how hypocritical is that??? If the Unionists and Brit Government lived up to their commitments, we wouldn't be in the mess we find ourselves in now.

Sl�n