IRA may still be active despite Northern Ireland peace deal - minister

By Ian Graham BELFAST (Reuters) - The Irish Republican Army may still be active a decade after its public disbandment, a senior Northern Ireland official said on Friday, a revelation that if substantiated could bring down the government of the British province. The remark prompted a flat denial from a senior figure in Sinn Fein, a party whose position as part of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government is predicated on the dissolution of the IRA, its former armed wing. An end to the IRA was a central plank of the 1998 Good Friday accord that largely ended three decades of violence in Northern Ireland between Catholics who favoured unification with the Republic of Ireland and Protestants wanting to stay British. It also drew a line under decades of shootings and bombings in England designed to pressure the British government into relinquishing Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland Justice Minister David Ford said police had told him the murder of former IRA member Kevin McGuigan in Belfast on Aug. 12 may have involved other members of the group. "They were talking about people who are or were members of the Provisional IRA, so clearly there is a concern ... that there may be current IRA members involved," Ford told the Irish state broadcaster RTE. "This is the first time in which the police have said clearly and openly the potential for the IRA still existing," said Ford, a member of the non-Sectarian Alliance Party. He cautioned however, that the possibility was only a line of inquiry and police must be given time to establish the facts. Detective Superintendent Kevin Geddes said in a statement it had "no information to say at this stage whether this (killing) was sanctioned at a command level or not," by the IRA. Six people have been detained for questioning about the murder, including convicted IRA bomber Sean Kelly, who was jailed for involvement in the 1993 killing of nine Protestants in Belfast. He was freed in 2000 under the Good Friday deal. Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson said that if the IRA turned out to be still active, he might seek the removal of Sinn Fein from government. "Republicans cannot be in the executive in circumstances where this murder was the work of the Provisional IRA," Robinson said in a statement, using the full name the IRA went by from the 1970s until its disbandment in 2005. Former IRA members have long been active in a number of small "dissident" militant groups that rejected the 1998 Good Friday accords, including groups using variants of the IRA name. But the existence of the main IRA group would raise questions about links to Sinn Fein, the largest Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland. It would also prove a big embarrassment for Sinn Fein in the Republic of Ireland, where opinion polls indicate it will likely either be part of the government or the largest opposition party after elections early next year. Senior Sinn Fein politician and former IRA member Gerry Kelly denied on Friday that the IRA still existed. "They have gone. Full Stop," he told RTE. He said international monitors confirmed in 2005 that the IRA had completed disarmed. (Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Mark Heinrich)