Conference tallis::celt

    I feel very sad for everyone.
    
    
    CHARLEY

so far, the casualties comprise two dead, one critical, and 5 others under 
observation.  Given the cynical timing and location of the bomb, it's a 
miracle that there weren't more.  It's disgusting, nontheless.

Chris.

During the cease fire the Sinn Fein office and Pro - Irish Americans
were given permission in Washington to raise funds. Last year they
raised nearly �700,000.

The lorry bomb contained and estimated half a ton of explosives.
I wonder how much was bought by American blood money.

Every American who donated even one cent or offered any support in
any way what so ever has to accept responsibility and blame.

Simon

    What a disgusting and cynical act. It is utterly contemptable, and
    completely without justification.
    
    The Unionists are baying "We told you so'. Now, perhaps, people can
    understand why the decommissioning of weapons was so important. Adams
    was listened to, and believed as an act of faith. That faith didn't go
    far enough to believe he could stop the IRA from reverting to violence
    if at some stage in the political compromises they didn't get their own
    way. That caution was entirely justified. 
    
    Adams is finished, if he knew about it and didn't say anything, he's no
    better than the murdering cowardly scum; if he didn't know, then they
    are truly out of control, and his words mean nothing. How are the
    British and Irish governments supposed to ever trust the IRA/Sinn Fein
    again? The scum who did this has killed the peace process in its
    tracks. Why? Because they don't want peace, and never have.
    
    It was interesting to see Adams refuse to condemn the bombing. He makes
    me puke.
    
    Ok, let's hear it then. Let's hear certain people tell us how it's all
    the fault of the British Government. Let's hear certain people tell us
    how they "understand" this disgusting act.
    
    Laurie$sickened.

What a sad day Friday was.. Let me say firstly that I totally and utterly 
condemn this act of wanton murder. Let there be no ambiguity there. I still 
find it hard to believe that the IRA would be so stupid as to re-start their 
campaign of violence. They have totally marginalised Sinn Fein, who can play 
no further part in the peace process unless and until they can demonstrate 
some form of control over the Provisionals....

There had to be a catalyst for the PIRA to return to violence. Nobody can blame
HMG for this bombing BUT their intransigence stalled the peace process. The
dumping of the Mitchell report will ultimately be seen as a turning point in
this period. As I have stated already, this in no way excuses the bombers. Mr
Major and Mr Mayhew are still pushing the Election idea, which has already 
been rejected out of hand by the SDLP and Sinn Fein and just about everyone
else apart form the Unionist parties. The Irish government are pushing
`proximity' talks and the Nationalist parties want immediate all-party
negotiations. Take your pick!...none of these suggestions is acceptable to all
parties so where do they go?...The only thing that we all agree on is that the
process must continue, the dialogue must continue and that the bombing must
stop forever. That, in itself, is a reason for going the extra mile for
peace....The people of NI dared to dream of peace, and you can't kill a dream
or bomb it out of existence. So let's pray for the dead and injured, silence
the guns and bombs and get the peace process back on track....

Ray....

I fail to understand how the British government is to blame for the failure of 
all the parties in NI to get together, and am even more astounded that this 
blame is also used by some people to excuse, or at least explain, the IRAs 
latest actions.  Let's face it, the real enemies of the peace are IRA/Sinn 
Fein, who either don't want a peaceful solution as it may interfere with their 
illegal activities, or are only interested in peace if they get exactly what 
*they* want.

It's very sad that, had the IRA not backed the government into a corner (and 
*no* democratic government can be seen to give in to terrorism, otherwise it 
will set a precedent), we may have seen a peaceful solution years ago.

Chris.

    It was a quite sickening outrage, and for what it is worth I would like
    to express my solidarity with the people of East London who suffered
    this attack. 
    
    I understand there was a gathering in Dublin in protest yesterday. It
    is certainly time to take to the streets. Given the possibilty that the
    IRA will continue, retalliation attacks here in the South are quite
    likely. 
    
    The nature and timing of the attack, a surprise attack on civilians
    relaxing after work on Friday evening, need no comment. It should
    finally be clear that there is nothing in the least progressive about
    the IRA agenda, they are a disgrace to all who want to see
    self-determination in Ireland. I have already discussed at length here
    the "moral logic" which enables them to carry out such bombings.
    
    That being said, I stand by my opinion that the Unionists have been 
    trying to destabilise the cease-fire and have now suceeded. We cab expect 
    the usual ritual dances. It is despicable that Taylor and Trimble have been
    slagging of those working for peace and making like as difficult as
    possible for them. Is Dick Spring really the most detested politician
    in Ireland this morning?
    
    I woulds suggest the following demands for a protest movement:
    
    * immediate cessation of violence and decommissioning of weapons and
    disbanding of all armed forces
    
    * immediate peace conference for all who wish to attend to discuss
    peaceful solutions 
    
    * a bill of rights
    
    * release on parole of all prisoners who sign a statement renouncing
    violence   
    
    * for mass participation in  a peace movement against all who are
    blocking the road to peace.
    
    Kevin
    

    re .8
    
    Mary Holland described how an RTE jounalist, Charlie Byrd, took the
    phone call. Charlie knew the voice. I hope you are not trying to be
    ironic?

                   <<< Note 1548.8 by MKTCRV::KMANNERINGS >>>
                            -< It is them alright >-

>    re .8
    
>    Mary Holland described how an RTE jounalist, Charlie Byrd, took the
>    phone call. Charlie knew the voice. I hope you are not trying to be
>    ironic?


Apologies. I deleted the note, because I realised the irony would be
lost on some people.

Stuart

    >Nobody can blame HMG for this bombing BUT their intransigence stalled the 
    peace process.<
    
    This must be a world record.
    
    
    CHARLEY

    re .10
    
       >Nobody can blame HMG for this bombing BUT their intransigence
    stalled the
        peace process.<
    
    
    CHARLEY, if that is a paraphrase of my position then it is a very crude
    one,  to the point of making it unrecognisable. Concerning John Major,
    I have written loads here about his position and why he went the way he
    did. I think he made some mistakes, but his hands are tied politically
    anyway so the range of choice he has is limited.
    
    Do you really think only one side is responsible for this ? If you do,
    I think you are part of the problem and not part of the solution.
    
    Kevin 

    Kev, see .5.
    
    
    CHARLEY

    .10
    
    very selective editing of my note, eh? If you think that my note was
    some kind of covert support for what the IRA did on Friday then you
    couldn't be more wrong. I am not an apologist for any organisation. I 
    have nothing but utter contempt for the IRA's actions. My note was my 
    appraisal of the situation, nothing more. Summarising it with one 
    selective quote isn't helpful. Please explain your `world record' 
    comment. I don't think you meant it as a compliment....
    
    Ray....

    FWIW, I thought Ray's note was quite well-balanced. John Major has
    indeed made some mistakes, but the political realities made his
    position very difficult. Planting and exploding that bomb wasn't a
    mistake, it was a deliberate and premeditated act of sabotage.
    
    Laurie.

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 12 February 1996  Home News

                          

IRA destroys the ceasefire with huge bomb blast in docklands
============================================================

One hour's notice but many injured as police try to clear office workers
========================================================================

By Sean O'Neill, George Jones, Richard Savill, David Sapsted, Neil
==================================================================
Darbyshire, Philip Johnston and Michael Smith

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph



THE IRA's 18-month ceasefire ended last night when a huge bomb
destroyed offices and commercial premises near the Canary Wharf office
complex in east London during the rush hour. No one was killed but a man
and a woman were critically ill with head and chest injuries. Two men and
three women were seriously injuries.

Three police officers from Limehouse station were injured as they tried to
evacuate the area.

The explosion shook buildings over a wide area exactly one hour after a
statement purporting to come from the IRA leadership in Dublin said it was
ending its complete cessation of hostilities "with great reluctance".

Other buildings in the area, including Canary Wharf tower - an IRA target
in November 1992 - were evacuated as police searched for suspect devices.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, responded by accusing the
Government and Unionist leaders of rejecting "an unprecedented
opportunity for peace". He attacked "predictable and hypocritical reaction
from political representatives who've done nothing to encourage the risky
search for a peaceful settlement".

He said it was a miracle there not been similar incidents "long before this"
and said he had told John Bruton, the Irish Prime Minister, he remained
committed to working for peace.

A senior White House official later said that Mr Adams telephoned
Anthony Lake, US National Security Adviser, shortly before the bomb
exploded to warn him that he had "heard some disturbing news".

British intelligence sources said they were alerted during the afternoon that
the IRA was about to return to violence.

John Major described the explosion as an "appalling outrage" and said the
bombers would be relentlessly pursued. Tony Blair, the Labour leader, said
he utterly condemned the "sickening outrage".

Mr Major said he would not be deflected from the search for a political
settlement. But ministers warned the IRA that if the bomb was a
"negotiating tactic" intended to force the Government to hold all-party
talks involving Sinn Fein it would not succeed.

Mr Major spoke to Mr Bruton for 10 minutes by telephone. Downing Street
said both men were "united in absolute condemnation of violence and were
determined to work together to make further progress towards peace".

The Dublin government held an emergency Cabinet meeting after which Mr
Bruton condemned the bombing "without reservation".

President Clinton, who has made Northern Ireland peace a personal priority,
denounced the terrorists' "cowardly action", but said it should not be
allowed to derail efforts to bring peace.

Mr Clinton, who was photographed last week shaking hands with Mr
Adams, telephoned Mr Major to express his outrage and sympathy.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary immediately reintroduced security measures
in Northern Ireland.

The Ministry of Defence said there were no plans to send extra troops.

The bomb was planted between two office buildings at South Quay, Marsh
Wall, on the Isle of Dogs. Both buildings, the nearby station on the
Docklands Light Railway and tower blocks were extensively damaged.

A local swimming pool was evacuated just before the blast blew in huge
windows, showering the interior with shards of glass.

Thirty "walking wounded" were being treated at the Royal London and
Newham General hospitals.

A number of people were treated by paramedics at the scene because
ambulances had difficulty getting through heavy traffic.

Many victims were office workers on their way home who, having been
turned away from the railway station, went to nearby pubs and wine bars and
were cut by flying glass as windows were blown in.

Proprietors of restaurants and bars said they were initially told by police not
to evacuate the area. Linda Holmes, 39, proprietor of the Trade Winds bar,
said she was alerted by police an hour before the explosion.

"When the bomb did go off, everyone went on the floor. Glass and the
ceiling fell on top of us and the radiators came away from the walls," she
said.

John Wilder, who works in the Portland House office complex opposite the
station, said: "It was like an earthquake. Everything just rumbled and the
ceiling came down on us. Myself and my colleague dived to the floor and just
held each other.

"All the windows on the lower floor were blasted out but, luckily, none of
the ones on the floor we were on."

British Transport police said they were evacuating the area when the bomb
went off.

The explosion came after a statement had been telephoned to the newsroom
of RTE, Ireland's national radio station, in Dublin. A bomb warning was
telephponed to the offices of a Belfast newspaper and passed to Scotland
Yard.

The statement declared that the IRA leadership was announcing "with great
reluctance that the complete cessation of military operations will end at six
o'clock".

The call was preceded by a recognised IRA codeword and was signed P
O'Neill, the name which normally accompanies IRA statements.

Charlie Bird, an RTE journalist, said the anonymous caller was a man he had
dealt with before and who he was certain represented the IRA.

"The person who rang was involved in the call telling us of the start of the
peace process," he said.

The IRA statement said: "The cessation presented a historic challenge for
everyone and Oglaigh ne hEireann (IRA) commends the leadership of
nationalist Ireland at home and abroad. They rose to the challenge. The
British Prime Minister did not.

"Instead of embracing the peace process, the British government acted in
bad faith with Mr Major and the Unionist leaders squandering this
unprecedented opportunity to resolve the conflict."

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, told BBC 2's Newsnight
programme: "It is incredible that the people telling us they want to move
into the democratic process should be resorting to violence in order to stop
democratic elections."

Scotland Yard announced that a casualty bureau had been opened for
members of the public to telephone if they believed relatives had been
involved in the Canary Wharf blast. The number is 0171 834 7777.

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 12 February 1996  Home News

                          

I need help, I need help screams pregnant girl
==============================================

By Celia Hall, Victoria Combe, John Steele, Toby Harnden and Hugh
=================================================================
Muir
====

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

NEIL PARKER and his fianc�e Samantha Herbert, who is seven months
pregnant, were walking along Marsh Wall when the bomb exploded.

"We were on our way home after an afternoon's shopping when I felt this
blast behind us. It threw my girlfriend to the ground," said Mr Parker, 16.

"I tried to grab her but she fell on her stomach and was screaming. She was
crying, and calling out: 'I need help. I need help. My baby'. I was frightened
for our baby and I called for a policeman who was running towards us."

Mr Parker, of Greenwich, south-east London, said he could see dozens of
people emerging from the smoke.

"It was like someone had fired a cannon and there were people with their
faces gashed, blood pouring down their clothes. Everywhere I looked there
were people lying on the floor. "

The couple were taken to the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, where
Miss Herbert, 17, was treated for minor stomach injuries.

"I'm still shaking. All I can think of is Samantha and our baby," said Mr
Parker.

Farid Errezag, 17, who is studying computing, had just arrived to meet his
sister at Marsh Wall.

"The road had been cordoned off already and the police told us to be careful,
but they let us go in," he said. "We were parked on the side of the road when
there was a blue flash and an enormous explosion.

"I felt blood gushing from my neck and just panicked. I got out and just ran. I
was screaming 'help me, help me'. I could not believe what was happening. I
saw a policeman and shouted at him: 'Am I dreaming?'

"The policeman just grabbed me and held me. Mr Errezag was taken to
hospital found his sister, Leyla, 14, who had suffered cuts and a broken leg. 

"I'm still alive. My family are still alive. I have been very lucky."

Graham Pain, who was in his office on the fifth floor of the bombed
building, South Quay Plaza II, said: "It shook my whole system. The windows
blew in and the ceiling tiles came down and a cloud of dust and papers blew
across the office.

"I made for the fire stairs and saw other people running down. Some had
head wounds and had blood streaming down their faces from glass injuries. I
helped one, I don't know who."

Lee Hickinbottom, 23, a magazine journalist, was in the Trade Winds pub
next to South Quay station. "I'd seen some police as I came in but thought
nothing of it.

"There was an almighty bang. All the windows of the pub were blown in.
Signs and shelves were coming down, radiators fell off the wall.

"One man in a suit was covered in blood all over his face and body. Another
guy had blood all over his chest."

Giovanni Agnelli, 30, an architect with Price Partnership, was at his desk in
South Quay when the bomb exploded.

"I ran out onto the balcony and saw a huge pall of smoke coming over the
quayside. There was the sound of shattering glass and this horrible
shuddering."

Les Black, 21, from the Isle of Dogs, said he was standing at nearby
Mudchute Station, when the blast happened.

"I heard a huge bang and the force of it seemed to cave in my chest. The sky
was covered by a huge white flash and the ground shook. It took my breath
away."

Steve Millar, 32, of Waltham Cross, Herts, was working in the DHL sorting
office close to the scene of the blast.

"The whole building shook," he said. "There was no panic but a few girls
were crying. The ceiling was hanging down and the tiles came off the walls.
The front of the building is a total mess."

Kate Jackson, 24, a marketing assistant, who lives on the island, said police
officers allowed her close to the site of the explosion half an hour before it
happened.

"I was 200 yards away when the bomb went off. The police appeared to be in
control but there were a lot of security guards there who looked very dazed."

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The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 12 February 1996  Home News

                          

Major calls on Sinn Fein to condemn 'outrage'
=============================================

By George Jones and Philip Johnston
===================================

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

THE Prime Minister described the explosion as an "appalling outrage". He
said: "We will pursue relentlessly those responsible for this disgraceful
attack."

John Major said it would be a tragedy if the hopes for lasting peace were
dashed by men of violence. "This atrocity confirms again the urgent need to
remove illegal arms from the equation."

He called on Sinn Fein and the IRA leadership to condemn those
responsible immediately and unequivocally.

Tony Blair, the Labour leader, utterly condemned the "sickening outrage"
and offered sympathy to victims.

"There can be no justification for a return to terrorism," he said. "I call on
everyone - including Sinn Fein - to condemn this appalling act."

Ken Maginnis, the Ulster Unionist security spokesman, said the end of the
ceasefire was not unexpected. It had been a "lull" in the IRA's operations to
try to achieve political advantage.

"I would wish to be able to say that I am surprised and shocked," he said.
"But unfortunately I am not."

Ministers will have to assess whether the Docklands bomb was a deliberate
attempt to put pressure on the Government to call all-party talks without
elections or disarmament.

Although the Sinn Fein leadership may disown the outrage, the worry in
Government will be that the organisation is trying to have it both ways: by
appearing in public to have given up violence while allowing splinter groups
to try to blackmail the Government.

Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said last night he was
"disgusted and very shocked" by the resumption of violence, but said the
search for a peaceful settlement should not be allowed to die.

He said he was glad to hear that Mr Adams was "saddened" by what had
happened, but added: " What we need to know now is whether he condemns
it. That is something of great importance.

"If anything comes out of this dreadful affair, it is the vindication of the
fears of the people that the refusal, even to start decommissioning
illegally-held arms, held by terrorist organisations, represented and was
intended to represent a threat. That threat has now been made manifest."

Ministers acknowledged that the end of the 17-month ceasefire would force
a Government reappraisal of its efforts to secure a political settlement and
the level of security both on the mainland and in Ulster. 

Mr Major will have to decide whether to push ahead with the plan for
elections - despite the opposition of Sinn Fein and the Irish government -
or try to find an alternative way to build the confidence necessary for
all-party talks.

Mr Major and John Bruton, the Irish premier, last night reaffirmed they
would not allow the bombing to deflect them from the search for a peaceful
settlement.

Downing Street said that during a 10-minute telephone call, both Mr
Bruton and the Prime Minister "were united in absolute condemnation of
violence and determined to work together to make further progress towards
peace". 

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

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'It sounded just like a huge earthquake'
========================================

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

GRAHAM PAIN was in his office on the fifth floor of the bombed building,
South Quay Plaza II, when the bomb went off.

"It shook my whole system," he said. "The windows blew in and the ceiling
tiles came down and a cloud of dust and papers blew across the office.

"I made for the fire stairs and saw other people running down. Some had
head wounds and had blood streaming down their faces from glass injuries. I
helped one, I don't know who."

Mr Pain, 36, customer service manager Baltic International Marine
Communications, had just interviewed a woman for a job. "I don't see how
she could have not been caught by the blast. She had just gone out."

Lee Hickinbottom, 23, a magazine journalist, was in the Trade Winds pub
next to South Quay station. "I'd seen some police as I came in but thought
nothing of it.

"There was an almighty bang. All the windows of the pub were blown in.
Signs and shelves were coming down, radiators fell off the wall. My drink
flew out of my hand and there was debris falling on my head.

"One man in a suit was covered in blood all over his face and body. Another
guy had blood all over his chest. I cannot believe the place was still open and
serving drinks after the police had received a warning."

John Doyle, 29, unemployed, was watching television at home near the
station. "All of a sudden there was a large explosion, the walls shook and all
my windows blew in. The thing I'll always remember is the way my heart felt
as if it was being sucked up into my head and straight back down again.

"I was very shaken but I couldn't think of anything else to do but sweep up.

"I switched on the news and they told me there had been a bomb warning. I
just wish they'd told the local people."

Mika Sugawara, who was giving a Japanese lesson to an architect, said: "I
heard a big bang and I thought it was an earthquake similar to ones I have
experienced in Japan."

John Wilder, who works in Portland House opposite the station, said:
"Everything just rumbled and the ceiling came down on us. Then alarms
started going off and the whole area filled with smoke. All the windows on
the lower floor were blasted out but, luckily, none of the ones on the floor we
were on.

"There were only two of us in the building at the time. Had it gone off an
hour earlier, there would have been hundreds."

As office workers recovered from the shock of the explosion some
complained that they were angry by the police evacuation operation.

Olu Fatoa who was working in a building next door to South Quay said: "I
was going out into Marsh Wall and a policeman told me to go back into my
office. When the bomb exploded it was like an earthquake. There was glass
everywhere, everything was shattered. My colleague and I just ran for our
lives." 

Ken Haggas, from San Francisco, was working in the South Plaza II
development and said that he was not aware of any evacuation.

"I feel lucky to be alive. We noticed that the Docklands Light Railway was
not running and when we called them they said that the area had been sealed
off for a security alert, but we didn't take it very seriously.

"I was working at my computer when the bomb went off and that took much
of the force. Glass came through the building and my only thought was to get
out of there. There will have to be an investigation into why we were not
made aware that something was happening."

Kate Jackson, 24, complained that she was allowed to within 200 yards of the
scene just 30 minutes before the bomb exploded.

She said: "The noise from the blast was incredible. I saw people who had
injuries to their faces from the glass. A group of them were standing around
the police car and were receiving assistance. There was glass everywhere.
We were told that of the six people badly injured two of them were
policemen.

Steve Millar, 32, of Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire was working in the DHL
Deliveries sorting office. He said: "The whole building shook as if it would
collapse. A few of the girls were screaming but on the whole there was little
panic. 

"The ceiling was hanging off and tiles came flying off the walls. The front of
the building is totally wrecked. All of the glass has been blown out."

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Unionists 'saddened but not surprised'
======================================

By Kathy Marks and Michael Smith
================================

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

THE Ulster Unionists said last night that they were not surprised at the
resumption of the violence.

But the two main parties representing Northern Ireland's Roman Catholics
were uncertain how to react.

Sinn Fein said it knew nothing about the ceasefire coming to an end. Earlier
yesterday, Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein leader, had said that the ceasefire was
"total and permanent".

Joe Hendron, SDLP MP for West Belfast, suggested that it might be a
breakaway group of the IRA which had called off the ceasefire and planted
the bomb. 

Shortly after the bomb exploded, Ken Maginnis, deputy leader of the Ulster
Unionists, said the IRA had seen the ceasefire as "an opportunity to
blackmail not only our Government but the Irish government and the
people of Northern Ireland into concessions that were undemocratic". 

He said the IRA had rejected the Downing Street declaration and its
commitment to exclusively peaceful methods of resolving Northern
Ireland's problems.

"IRA/Sinn Fein stand alone, determined with their 4.8 per cent support
from our entire electorate in Northern Ireland to hold people to ransom by
the use of violence," he said. "People will now understand why we wanted
decommissioning and did not trust what was happening."

Recalling that the IRA had targeted the Isle of Dogs in one of its last
attempted attacks on the British mainland, he said: "It was to a degree
predictable that they would pick up where they left off."

The ceasefire, he said, had been simply a ruse "in order to try to gain some
sort of political advantage".

Mr Maginnis said he had spent the months since the ceasefire declaration
"hoping against hope" that he was wrong after predicting that it was merely
a cynical republican ploy.

"Sadly, my hopes and the hopes of thousands have been dashed by what has
happened," he said.

"I think it became more and more apparent over the last few months that
Sinn Fein were distancing themselves from the IRA so that when an
incident of this sort occurred they would be able to say: 'Of course we regret
this but we do understand the reason for it. It is justified by this or that'."

Mr Hendron said he would not wish to exonerate the IRA of blame for last
night's explosion. But he laid blame at the door of the Government which,
he claimed, had ignored the report prepared by the international body set up
to examine ways to bring about all-party talks.

"They did not discuss the Mitchell Report in the House of Commons," Mr
Hendron said. "The Prime Minister was immediately calling for elections . . .
They wanted to rush into elections without any discussions with the
nationalist parties."

He claimed that the Government had been using delaying tactics and
"playing a game with people's lives".

Mr Hendron said: "We have had 17 months of a ceasefire and what has the
British Government done in this time? They have been pussyfooting
around. I don't want the British Government saying their hands are clean in
this matter."

Andrew Hunter, chairman of the Commons backbench Northern Ireland
committee, rejected suggestions that the Government was in any way to
blame. "That is absolutely monstrous," he said.

"What happened this evening was that some people made a cool, calculated
decision to initiate an operation that in all probability would kill people.
That was their decision alone.

"I will not remotely accept any suggestion that anyone other than the IRA is
responsible for resuming violence, and evil men tonight have decided that
they will make that decision."

Mr Hunter said it was too early to say what the Government's response
would be. "Much had been achieved over the last 16 months, and in
Northern Ireland there is a groundswell of yearning for permanent peace,"
he said.

"We don't know if this is a one-off or the start of a campaign, but attitudes
have changed, especially in Northern Ireland itself, and I don't believe we
will see a return to the wholesale violence we have witnessed in the last 25
years.

"The guard against terrorism has not been lowered in the last 16 months,
and you can rest assured that appropriate anti-terrorism measures are being
taken."

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The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 12 February 1996  Home News

                          

Warning of outrage to end the peace 
====================================

By Richard Savill, Irish Correspondent
======================================

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

THE explosion in London follows repeated warnings in security circles in
Northern Ireland that, if the IRA ceasefire broke down, the violence would
resume in mainland Britain.

Only last weekend, Sir Hugh Annesley, Royal Ulster Constabulary Chief
Constable, said: "One bomb in the mainland is worth 10 over here in terms
of public reaction."

Sir Hugh warned that the IRA was keeping its machine "oiled" in Britain
but he also added that there was nothing in intelligence patterns to suggest
that the terrorists were intent on doing anything to break the ceasefire.

There has been growing impatience within the republican movement about
the pace of progress and unease at the prospect of an elected forum for
Northern Ireland as a route to all-party talks.

There have been repeated warnings from Sinn Fein about a possible return
to violence unless Britain agreed to demands to convene all-party talks.

The timing of last night's statement, however, was viewed as a suprise in
Belfast. Sinn Fein has been in regular talks with the Irish government and
the nationalist consensus is lined up against Britain.

The indications are that President Clinton is also pushing for all-party talks.
If there is a return to the IRA campaign, the republican movement will face
a huge international backlash.

It was unclear last night whether the IRA statement was officially
sanctioned by the leadership and therefore represented a formal end to the
ceasefire. There was suggestions that there may be a split within the
republican movement although two recognised codewords were used.

There have been recent signs that the ceasefire might be on the verge of
crumbling. Breakaway IRA terrorists were suspected last weekend of
launching the first gun attack on a member of the security forces in
Northern Ireland since the ceasefire was declared. A RUC reserve officer
and his wife escaped injury when 57 shots were fired at their home in Moy,
Co Tyrone. The IRA later denied responsibility but police sources suspected
republican involvement.

In November, a 1,000lb van bomb was discovered near the Irish border. The
bomb was blamed on a breakaway republican group but was seen as
reflecting growing discontent within the movement.

Scepticism has always prevailed in Unionist circles that the IRA ceasefire
would break the the stalemate. During the 25 years of violence, such
declarations did little to reduce violence. Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president,
has never had the full backing of republican hardliners, who believed the
so-called "unarmed strategy" would badly weaken the organisation.

In the past the guns have come out when the IRA was forced to choose
between the gun and the ballot box. Republicans are strongly opposed to
Unionist proposals for an elected forum which they see as a return to a
Stormont assembly. 

If the ceasefire has now failed, many will see Mr Adams's position as
untenable. Factional feuds have historically split the republican movement.

Reports in Dublin at the time of the ceasefire declaration said the decision
was carried inside the seven-person IRA Army council by a narrow four
votes to three. The IRA leadership decided to back Mr Adams and the
political strategy on condition that some visible gains were forthcoming.

Republican frustration has grown over what the movement saw as Britain's
decision to discard the report by the international body on disarmament,
chaired by George Mitchell, the former American senator.

There was a growing belief last night that the statement and the blast were
offically authorised by the IRA. The manpower and the pre-planning
required would suggest that the mainstream IRA would have been aware of
such activity, observers in Dublin said.

There has been speculation that the IRA and Sinn Fein might engineer a
managed split. Under this theory the IRA would resume its violence while
Sinn Fein would try to maintain its role in the "peace process" by distancing
itself from terrorism.

If the blast was officially authorised, the Army Council must apparently
believe that by a series of high profile "spectacular" bombing attacks in
Britain, they can force the Government to engage directly in negotiations.

This strategy, however, is likely to be met with the re-introduction of a
series of security and other measures by Britain. These could include a
reimposition of the broadcasting ban and the return to the streets of
Northern Ireland of British troops.

The IRA and loyalist military machines have remained "cohesive" since the
ceasefires. The IRA has continued targeting, quartermastering and training.
But security chiefs have never been sure what percentage of the activity was
designed to keep people on the ground busy or what percentage represented
the potential for a return to violence.

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Hospitals care for 31 people hurt in blast
==========================================

By Celia Hall and Victoria Combe
================================

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

TWO London hospitals last night treated 31 people for a range of injuries
from the blast and flying glass. Two people, a man and a woman, were
critically injured in the explosion.

They were being operated on last night at the Royal London Hospital,
Whitechapel. Both needed resuscitation by paramedics and were understood
to be suffering from head and chest injuries.

The hospital, which had been put on "major incident" status, took the bulk
of the injured and shocked casualties. Four other adults received serious
injuries, mainly broken limbs.

Minor injuries were suffered by 26 people, including three police officers
from Limehouse police station on the entrance to the Isle of Dogs. Roger de
Graaf, the first police officer on the scene, had an eye injury.

The injuries to the walking wounded were mostly caused by flying glass and
debris, a hospital spokesman said.

Gerry Green, chief executive of the Royal London, said last night that the
"major influx" of casualties was over by 10pm.

"It is calm in accident and emergency now," he said. "We will be keeping our
staff on standby in case something flares up."

The back-up hospital designated to take injuries in the major incident
procedure was Newham General Hospital where four adults with minor
injuries were treated.

Neil Zammett, chief executive of Newham Healthcare Trust, said last night:
"We now believe that early reports of injuries were exaggerated. But we were
ready.

"We had 10 consultants and 11 junior doctors and our full nursing
complement in the accident department on duty."

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Terrorists believe violence will solve the problem of elections
===============================================================

Paul Brew, Professor of Politics at Queen's University, Belfast, analyses
=========================================================================
the IRA motives
===============

WHY did the IRA go back? When the ceasefire was announced, Mr Gerry
Adams declared his conviction that a purely political way forward existed
for the Republican movement.

The new relationship which had been forged with Irish America, John
Hume's SDLP and the Irish government was the key. Nationalists spoke
dreamily of the highly successful "New Departure" forged by Parnell in 1879
as the model for this altered strategy. Privately, also, some leading
Republicans said they had received a signal that the British would withdraw
within 10 years and some said that a deal had been struck to this end
between the then Irish Prime Minister, Albert Reynolds, and Mr John
Major.

Given these assumptions, the past 18 months have seemed like one
disappointment after another; in essence, the British government refused to
pressurise the Unionists into all-party talks while an atmosphere of threat
and undiminished Republican armament remained.

When the Mitchell Commission finally forced the British Government to
drop its precondition on arms - a stipulation well known to Republicans as
Gerry Adams's speeches and inteviews from early 1994 indicate - John
Major then embraced the proposal of the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David
Trimble, for an elected assembly to negotiate a settlement. Nationalist
Ireland was stunned; a Unionist leader had shown the ability to set the
agenda in a way which was not conceivable in the era of his predecessor, Sir
James Molyneaux.

Mitchel McLaughlin, National Chairman of Sinn Fein, an apparent "dove",
seemed to acknowledge that an electoral process was worthy of
consideration. For others, it appears to have been the casus belli; the
amazing reality is that we have a return to violence not because senior
Republicans realistically think it can bring about a united Ireland but
because they think it can bring about a peace process on more favourable
terms without problematical events like elections.

The belief is that the British will now drop their points of principle and
exert pressure on the Unionists to go to the table. Even if this British
Government were to do so - it is not likely - the Unionists would claim that
all their previous reservations have been vindicated.

The actual choice of day for the return to violence could hardly have been
more surprising. At midday, Gerry Adams had been at his most eirenic on a
local radio programme, talking of his Protestant brothers and sisters. Mr
McLaughlin had taken part in a path-breaking television debate with Mr
Ken Maginnis, the Ulster MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, who has
carried the coffins of so many of his constituents killed by the IRA.

It was yet another indication of the new era of dialogue which appeared
slowly to be opening up. Tory MPs in Dublin spoke in a surprisingly kindly
way of the Irish government's Dayton-style talks proposal. Most amazingly
of all, it was announced that two Sinn Fein councillors were scheduled to
visit 10 Downing Street as part of a delegation seeking economic aid.

What are the calculations which underly the IRA's actions? There is one
possibility that this represents the response of a splinter group. Many
influential northern Republicans claim to have been in the dark. This is why
the Prime Minster called for the Sinn Fein leadership to condemn the
bombing. But Mr Adams's statement contained no hint of condemnation.
This may mean that the leadership of the Republican movement is thinking
of a new approach. For some time, Sinn Fein has been trying to create clear
green water between itself and the IRA.

Even a favoured reverential phrase fell into disrepute - "what is the
Republican movement?" - Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein asked a
surprised Spanish journalist recently. The point was to stress that there is no
unified movement of Sinn Fein/IRA.

It is a fiction Mr Major chose to reject pointedly on his recent visit to
Ballymena. The purpose of such a manoeuvre is clear enough. Mr Adams
will hope to retain his image as peace maker and - as he made clear in his
RTE interview last night - to continue to meet with important people,
Prime Ministers and no doubt presidents. This may well be an illusion, but
the Republican movement is no stranger to the politics of illusion. In the
first instance, it is the reaction of the Irish government which will be most
telling; it would be tragic if London and Dublin were to drift apart at this
difficult moment. In particular, the myth of Unionist and British
intransigence will be the decisive ideological battleground.

The irony is that senior Ulster Unionists were privately preparing
themselves for talks in the summer - the recent speech of Mr John Taylor,
MP, the party's deputy leader, in his constituency at Strangford offered a
kind of blueprint.

At the same time, the British Government offered much - not least a very
soft negotiation of the Framework Documents to keep the truce alive. For
the moment the only good news is the restrained reaction of the Loyalist
paramilitaries. 

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The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 12 February 1996  The Front Page



Video hunt for lorry bombers
****************************

By Neil Darbyshire, Philip Johnston, George Jones and Ben Fenton
================================================================

   THE IRA terrorists responsible for planting the huge lorry-bomb 
  =================================================================
which devastated a wide area of London's Docklands on Friday night,
===================================================================
were probably captured by a number of closed circuit security cameras
=====================================================================
as they parked the vehicle, police said yesterday. 

The bomb, which caused damage estimated at �100 million, is believed to
have been a mixture of Semtex military high explosive and fertiliser,
weighing up to 1,000 pounds and detonated by a timing device.

It was concealed in an ageing blue Ford Cargo flat-back lorry with false
number plates, parked in a small service road between two large office blocks
and next to a parade of shops near South Quay station, Isle of Dogs.

Surveying the bomb scene yesterday, Commander John Grieve, head of the
anti-terrorist branch, said there had been several security cameras operating
at the time the lorry was parked.

Although many of the cameras were destroyed, it is understood the
videotape was preserved at remote monitoring stations.

"We have got a lot of good closed circuit TV footage," he said. "We are
analysing it and you will be the first to know when I have got something good
to share with you. There is material from all round the area."

As Scotland Yard warned that further mainland attacks could be launched
"any time, anywhere", a serious split was developing between London and
Dublin over how to restart the search for a political settlement in Northern
Ireland.

John Bruton, Irish prime minister, said the British government's idea of an
elected peace convention to negotiate the future of the province was a
mistake that would "pour petrol on the flames".

He called again on John Major to back Dublin's proposal of a Bosnia-style
summit to bring all parties together, but this was sceptically received in
London.

Mr Major last night chaired a meeting of senior Ministers and officials at
Downing Street to assess both the political and security implications of the
IRA's return to violence.

As Ministers began the meeting officials said there was absolute
determination to pursue "the criminals responsible for the bomb
relentlessly."

The Downing Street statement added: "Ministers and the police are keenly
aware of the need to reassure the public of the strength of the police
response and to reiterate the need for public vigilance.

"Security which had been scaled down in the last 17 months can be scaled up
quickly in a measured way. There is close co-operation between the RUC
and the Irish Gardai on security matters."

Officials said the full Northern Ireland cabinet committee - which includes
security representatives - would meet in Downing Street today .

The explosion, at 7.01pm, demolished the shops, blew in tens of thousands
of office windows and left a crater 14 ft wide and more than 20 ft deep,
rupturing gas and water mains.

Police had received their first coded bomb warning 80 minutes earlier, in the
middle of the rush hour, and had begun clearing South Quay station and the
surrounding streets.

Senior officers defended their decision not to evacuate nearby buildings, on
the grounds that they did not know exactly where the bomb was or when it
was due to go off.

Some office workers said they were still at their desks when the blast blew in
windows and caused ceilings to collapse on them. They had received no
warnings and no security advice.

The two men killed by the bomb - Inan Bashir, 29 and John Jefferies, 31 -
were working in a small newsagents close to the centre of the explosion.

"Under the circumstances, we felt the safest place in general for people to be
was inside," said Assistant Commissioner Anderson Dunn, police
commander for north-east London.

"If we had mounted a full evacuation, there could have been hundreds of
people walking past the bomb as it went off."

Insurance assessors said the force of the blast was comparable to the two
previous IRA explosions in the City of London - at St Mary Axe and
Bishopsgate - and estimated total damage to property and business at more
than �100 million.

Assistant Commissioner David Veness, head of Scotland Yard's specialist
operations department, said further bomb attacks could be launched on the
mainland and urged public vigilance.

"It could well be the intention of the IRA to follow this with more attacks of
a similar nature, at any time, anywhere," he said.

"If the IRA does this, it is likely to attack targets which are highly visible,
with economic or political significance, or which are otherwise prestigious."

Michael Howard, Home Secretary, brought Mr Major up-to-date on
additional security measures being taken to guard the City of London and
other likely targets. The Prime Minister will make a statement to the
Commons later today.

They agreed to back Dublin in refusing to take part in any further
face-to-face meetings with Gerry Adams and other Sinn Fein leaders until
the IRA agreed to reinstate the ceasefire - though they are prepared to keep
open informal lines of com munication.

But their attempts to pressurise Sinn Fein into a renewed commitment to
peaceful and democratic methods was overshadowed by recriminations over
Mr Major's decision to make elections the way into all-party talks.

Mr Bruton said: "I believe that the decision to introduce in the middle of the
process the idea that there are only two ways forward - one a precondition of
giving up weapons, or a precondition of an election, this open and shut
presentation in the House of Commons of the matter was a mistake."

He added: "I believe the idea of having an election of the kind suggested
immediately after the resumption of violence would pour petrol on the
flames.

"I think it would be a serious mistake. I would urge them not to pursue that
path and to accept the advice of the Irish government on this matter."

Earlier, Sir Patrick Mayhew, Northern Ireland Secretary - who attended last
night's Downing Street meeting - reaffirmed the Government's view that
elections were the only way of getting all parties to the negotiating table now
that IRA disarmament had been ruled out by the commission chaired by
former American senator George Mitchell.

Sinn Fein leaders made clear they were not prepared to call upon the IRA to
stop the bombings and sought to blame Britain for the breakdown of the
ceasefire.

Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president, said: "What is the point in me going to
the IRA, unless I am able to go with a persuasive argument. The IRA are
open to persuasion. We would not have had a cessation of violence if they
not been open to persuasion.

"I have to live in that hope, and what we put together before we have to try
and put together again, and we won't do that by closing doors."

Martin McGuinness, who is regarded as the hard-line voice of Sinn Fein,
claimed the absence of talks had undermined his position and that of Mr
Adams.

"The British Government can't absolve themselves of the guilt. The fact is
that for their own political expediency, for their own survival, they have sold
themselves to the unionists," he said.

David Trimble, Ulster Unionist leader, said: "It would be terrible and quite
reprehensible if the democratic process was set aside because of a return to
violence."

o Police appealed yesterday for information about the blue flat-back lorry
which contained the Docklands bomb. It was a 1985 Ford Cargo 08
converted into a low-loader. False plates - registration number C292 GWG
- had been fitted to it but it is believed the lorry would have had different
plates until recently. 

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The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 12 February 1996  The Front Page



The moment Pc thought - I am going to die
=========================================

By Wendy Holden
===============

THE policeman who identified the IRA bomb and evacuated the area
seconds before it exploded spoke yesterday of the moment he thought he
would die.

Pc Roger de Graaf, 30, whose wife is 13-weeks pregnant and who had just
been told he had passed his sergeant's exams, was thrown to the ground by
"what felt like a 200mph wind".

As he lay curled up on the ground with shards of glass and debris raining
down around him, he saw a car hurtling towards him - the driver still in
shock. He managed to roll out of the way. 

Pc de Graaf said: "There was a rumble and what felt like a 200mph wind
coming past my ears.

"I was knocked off my feet and I curled up like a ball. All I could think was 'it
is a bomb and I'm going to die.'

"The car coming at me was an automatic stuck in gear. The driver was in
shock. I thought 'I've survived the bomb, I'm just going to get run over now'.

"The car stopped as its bumper hit my back."

With blood pouring from an eye injury, Pc de Graaf helped the driver of the
car and other colleagues to take shelter as glass, metal and concrete
showered down.

Despite his own injury, he helped colleagues who also suffered minor
injuries get a safe distance from the scene.

He eventually went to hospital where his injury required five internal
stitches and a dozen external stitches.

During the pandemonium that followed the blast, he was able to borrow a
mobile phone to reassure his wife that he was safe.

The couple have a 20-week-old daughter.

His wife and his father had heard the explosion in Woodford, eight miles
away, and said the doors had rattled in their frames. 

Pc de Graaf, based at Limehouse for seven years, said he was thankful the
bomb exploded at 7 pm rather than a couple of hours earlier when "the dead
would have been counted in hundreds rather than twos".

Pc de Graaf said he was "the length of a football pitch" away from the
vehicle when the device exploded.

He and a colleague had previously become aware of the vehicle. "We were
actually all sort of standing next to it, and we said 'maybe this one shouldn't
be here,' " he said.

"We did some checks on it, the results of those checks aroused our
suspicions a bit more. At that point we decided if it was going to be anything,
that was going to be the vehicle."

He added: "I have done nothing heroic, nothing special, I'm just the one who
made the checks on the vehicle and who has a very scratched face."

Pc de Graaf is now on sick leave, but he said the experience would not deter
him from his police career. "It's what I do," he said.

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Years of work towards peace lost in second
==========================================

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

o Oct 21, 1994: John Major announces exploratory talks with Sinn Fein
before the end of year.

o Oct 24: Troop patrols in Londonderry halt.

o Nov 1: Security gates open on Belfast peace line.

o Nov 23: Army make first troop reductions.

o Dec 9: First exploratory talks at Stormont.

o Jan 15, 1995: /95/1/13/outy.htmlTroops end daytime patrols in Belfast.

o Feb 22: John Major and new Irish Premier John Bruton unveil framework
document.

o March 17: President Clinton meets Gerry Adams at White House.

o March 22: Michael Ancram holds first ministerial talks with loyalist.

o April 21: Further 400 troops withdraw from Ulster.

o April 26: Man shot dead in Belfast. IRA is blamed.

o May 10: First ministerial talks with Sinn Fein.

o May 24: Patrick Mayhew meets Adams behind closed doors in Washington.

o Aug 28: James Molyneaux resigns as Unionist Party leader.

o Nov 17: Release of 88 Republican and loyalist prisoners.

o Nov 28: British and Irish governments announce "twin track" process.

o Nov 30: Mr Clinton visits Belfast and Londonderry.

o Dec 15: Mitchell commission begins work.

o Dec 19: First Sinn Fein meeting under twin-track process with Sir Patrick
Mayhew.

o Jan 24, 1996: Mitchell commission reports and John Major announces
proposal for an elected body.

o Feb 9: IRA announces ceasefire is over. Blast in east London.

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Major must not be blown off election course
===========================================

AS John Major considered his options in Downing Street last night, some
senior Tory backbenchers were prophesying the worst.

"We're back to square one", said a former minister with experience of
Northern Ireland, and, in apocalyptic terms, he said there was nothing for it
but to let the cycle of violence take its course.

The IRA would attempt further "spectaculars" in which dozens of British
people might be killed, he predicted. The loyalist paramilitaries would
inevitably re-enter the fray in Belfast, and perhaps even in Dublin.

And the IRA, he said, would come to its senses only when the loyalist
reprisals against Catholics were again as savage as the Greysteel massacre of
1994, which is thought to have done much to persuade the IRA to cease fire. 

Even if John Major secretly believed such pessimism - and there is no sign
that he does - he could not afford to listen. For to abandon negotiation, and
to leave the search for peace to the gunmen, would be to admit that he had
been blown off course by one bomb.

There are those, of course, who say he should take the opposite course, and
come out waving the white flag.

Mr Major could accept what Gerry Adams and Mr Peter Temple-Morris,
MP, have said, that the explosion was effectively the British Government's
fault, for dawdling over talks, and for offending the nationalists with the
prospect of elections. He could accept the demands of Sinn Fein, and enter
into all-party talks without preconditions.

That, though, would be seen as an appalling surrender to violence. The
Prime Minister could not contemplate it, and even if he did, it would
provoke a devastating revolt not just from the Ulster Unionists, but also
from his own backbenches.

Most likely, Mr Major will do what comes naturally to him. He will plug
doggedly on with his attempts to keep the "peace process" alive; to launch
negotiations in such a way as to be acceptable to the Unionists. That means a
return to maximum security precautions. It means shunning Sinn Fein, as
Dublin has done, until such time as the party offers a renunciation of
violence.

It also means sticking to his suggestion that there should be elections, as a
way of creating a constituent assembly to discuss the future of Northern
Ireland. Mr Bruton, the Irish Prime Minister, again denounced these
elections yesterday, saying they would "pour petrol on the flames". For the
nationalist parties, any kind of election smacks of a return to Stormont and
the tyranny of the majority.

Indeed, it was the Government's embrace of elections, after the Mitchell
report on decommissioning, which, or so the Provisionals would have us
believe, drove them to blow up South Quay. But it is precisely because Sinn
Fein/IRA have now used violence that Mr Major cannot back down.

The electoral route may in one sense favour the Unionists, in that it would
underscore that they represent the large majority of people in Ulster,
including many Catholics.

And yet in accepting the electoral route to negotiations, the crucial point is
that Mr Trimble has already given ground. He has effectively dropped his
precondition that the IRA give up at least some of their weapons before they
enter into talks. If the Unionists sit down with them, the IRA's strategy of
the bomb and the ballot box will have prevailed.

Even if the nationalists are persuaded to go the electoral route, the
difficulties have hardly begun. Elections would be a mere prelude to real
negotiations between irreconcilable enemies: those who favour a united
Ireland, and those who favour a United Kingdom.

Until last Friday, Mr Major's strategy was to delay the moment of
confrontation between those two sides in the hope that peace would
somehow take root. That strategy of delay, at least, has failed. 

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Writing is on the wall
======================


By Colin Randall in Londonderry
===============================


Major must not be blown off election course

IN the city that experienced the first outbreak of serious violence at the start
of the Troubles, and also the earliest signs of a volatile peace, the sign
language of the walls recently assumed a more belligerent tone.

"Peace or War? Not an ounce," declares an uncompromising painted slogan
underlining republican resistance to the surrender of the tiniest symbolic
portion of terrorist arsenals.

The message appeared a few weeks ago on the city walls overlooking
Londonderry's nationalist Bogside.

To the minority loyalist community, and to nationalists hostile to the
politics of bomb and gun, its sentiments reflect IRA thinking more
accurately than do Sinn Fein expressions of sympathy to relatives of the
London bomb victims.

Among many inhabitants of Northern Ireland's second city, where Roman
Catholics outnumber Protestants by more than two to one, the talk is of
bewilderment as much as horror.

At St Eugene's Roman Catholic Cathedral yesterday, the Rev Peter
McLaughlin told worshippers at morning Mass there was "disappointment,
shock and bitterness" at the deaths and damage inflicted in London.

Mention of Londonderry still conjures images of appalling loss of life and
destruction. Yet it has been seen as a city largely at peace since a year or
more before the ceasefire.

The evidence of investment, confidence and relative prosperity is a far cry
from darker days of vicious rioting, Bloody Sunday and an IRA bomb
campaign.

Gregory Campbell, leader of the Democratic Unionist group on the
nationalist-dominated city council, and his party's security spokesman, said
Protestants had paid a heavy price for Londonderry's better fortunes.

Thousands, motivated by fear and an increasing sense of isolation, had
moved east from city areas so that the west bank, once 40 per cent
Protestant, was now 96 per cent Catholic.

Mr Campbell said many Unionists regarded the pre-ceasefire absence of
significant conflict in Londonderry, and subsequently in the province, as a
spurious peace.

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Editor's clock stopped but not presses
======================================

Major must not be blown off election course 

THE SHOCKWAVE from the bomb was powerful enough to dislodge the
clock from the wall in the 12th floor office of Charles Moore, The Daily
Telegraph's editor, some 400 yards away in Canary Wharf, writes Wendy
Holden.

Production of Saturday's edition of the newspaper was severely affected but
contingency plans laid after the IRA's attempted bombing of Canary Wharf
in 1992 meant that more than a million copies were published.

The clock still shows that the bomb went off at 7.01pm, a peak time for
newspaper production. The offices were evacuated on the instructions of the
police at 8.50pm.

When it was established that editorial staff would not be allowed back into
the building for several hours, a team of key staff were sent to our
contingency offices in central London, where a special edition with 24 news
and city pages was produced. A total of 1,050,000 copies of the paper were
published at our print works in Manchester and at West Ferry Road on the
Isle of Dogs, a few hundred yards from the scene of the bombing.

Security and traffic problems at the London plant meant that deliveries were
not possible to every part of the country, leaving many readers with the
Weekend section only.

Many regular features of the paper were impossible to produce under the
circumstances, including the prize crossword, which is published today
instead.

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Nationalists: At last chance saloon
===================================


By Eoghan Harris
================


"The IRA is incorrigible. Internment is inevitable. Irish Television must
make a moral choice between the republic and the republicans."

THESE were the opening words of my weekly political column, penned on
Friday, Jan 5, five weeks before the bomb. Such sentiments were not popular
in the Irish Republic then.

Despite Docklands, they are not popular now. Most of the Irish media have
moved in a moral fog since John Major made a mess of the Mitchell report.
And thereby hangs this tale.

When I say the IRA is incorrigible, I mean that at the end of all party talks, a
majority of the IRA will prove to be in-corrigible - "incapable of
correction". Most gunmen will never settle for anything short of an
all-Ireland republic.

This means that John Major has to supply John Bruton with a political
package that will detach the SDLP and the decent elements of Sinn Fein
from that rump. Power-sharing, parity of esteem, cross-border executive -
that's the price of peace.

When I say internment is inevitable, I do not mean physical internment but
that we in the republic must subject Sinn Fein to an internment of the moral
imagination.

If I say the RTE must make moral choices, this is to admit that they are
failing to do so now. The rot is spreading fast. This weekend, despite John
Bruton's brave stance against Sinn Fein, Britain was losing the battle for the
mind and heart of the republic. 

Whatever the reasons, Bruton is under pressure that may not prove
bearable, and if his "rainbow" coalition should fall, Britain is back with the
appalling prospect of dealing with Fianna Fail, which will play footsie with
Sinn Fein. So, John Bruton is the best - and in my view last - chance these
islands have for peace.

Seen from John Bruton's side, Major seemed to be going mad. The Mitchell
report, published that day, had given Bruton a golden chance to haul sullen
Sinn Fein mutineers before the crew of the Irish Republic, and harangue
them on the crunch issue of consent.

But just as he moved to address the jury, John Major wittered on about
elections. Major's arrow in the air brought down the albatross of John Hume
around Bruton's neck.

The media in the republic, led by RTE, went into regular bouts of
Anglophobia. By last weekend most people in the republic had been
brainwashed into believing that Major had rejected Mitchell. 

The Docklands bomb exposed Adams as a courtier, not a king; a leader too
cowardly to carry out a political education campaign to prepare his members
for the real world.

Eoghan Harris is a Dublin-based political columnist

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Gerry Adams: From limelight to a dark alley
===========================================

By Richard Savill, Irish Correspondent
======================================

   AFTER 17 months during which his esteem in America was such that
President Clinton was prepared to go out of his way to meet him on a west
Belfast footpath, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, now finds his
political credibility devastated by the ending of the IRA ceasefire. 

Only eight days before the Docklands blast, Mr Adams was negotiating with
Mr Clinton in Washington. Now, the view both in Washington and Dublin is
that Mr Adams has betrayed not only the US president but also the Irish
government and is a much diminished figure.

Mr Adams repeatedly stated at the weekend that he had "no
pre-knowledge" of the IRA attack. He learned of the ceasefire breakdown
from "media rumours" on Friday and telephoned the White House at about
6pm with some "disturbing news". The call did not include talk of a
bombing, only that the ceasefire might be about to break down.

If Mr Adams did not know of the bombing in advance, the inference is that
he has lost influence over the IRA and there would be little point in the
Government continuing to talk to him.

If Mr Adams had some prior knowledge that an IRA attack was in the
planning stages, this would make his position as the leader of a supposedly
democratic party untenable.

One of Belfast's political commentators suggested last night that the Sinn
Fein leadership may have adopted a "notional fall-back position" so that, if
it could not prevent a bombing campaign, it would distance itself from the
IRA.

This policy, however, ran into difficulties on Saturday when John Bruton,
the Irish Prime Minister, implied that he would not meet Sinn Fein until the
ceasefire was restored. Yesterday, however, the disclosure that the Irish
government had contacted Sinn Fein suggests an attempt to save Mr
Adams.

For Mr Adams and the Sinn Fein leadership, pursuing an "unarmed
strategy" in the face of opposition from other factions was always going to be
risky.

If it failed, as one Belfast commentator said last year, those leaders most
closely identified with it might have to "run for their lives as well as their
reputations".

Mr Adams acknowledged the dangers of his strategy in a recent interview. "I
have lived my life on the edge and I would like a normal life," he said. "But I
am doomed, as long as I am spared, to be a political animal."

The future of Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein strategist, may also be
under threat because he has backed Mr Adams. But he is thought to have
closer links with the IRA and so to be less vulnerable. He has been described
as "the Sinn Fein leader with the most direct line of contact with the IRA".

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John Hume: MP who took the brickbats
====================================

ONLY five months ago, John Hume, MP, was waiting in a Dublin hotel to
hear whether he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Yesterday, he was staring at
the wreckage of the "peace process", buried in the debris of the bomb, writes
Philip Johnston, Political Correspondent.

The return of Irish terrorism to Britain shocked most democratic politicians
in London, Belfast and Dublin. But few looked more obviously shattered
than Mr Hume, who had guaranteed to Unionists that the republicans had 
ended their armed campaign for good.

Long regarded as the moderate face of Irish nationalism, Mr Hume took
risks by fraternising with Gerry Adams, the leader of a party that the SDLP
has cause to fear more than any other.

Mr Hume was willing to take the brick-bats and endure the obloquy in
aspiring to the prize of a permanent and peaceful settlement of Ulster's
historic enmities.

Yesterday, Mr Hume said he was considering the overall situation, adding:

"I spoke with Gerry Adams and I'm going to do everything in my power to
ensure there is a total . . . cessation of violence."

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Analysis: The Unionists - a chance to push for elected assembly
===============================================================

By Paul Goodman in Belfast
==========================

IT NEARLY happened on Friday night. Only a few hours after the
Docklands bomb, in the heart of loyalist west Belfast, a group of masked
men tried to hijack a car. Somehow, its owner repulsed them; his house may
now be burnt out in reprisal but had that group - which seems to have
consisted of UDA members - succeeded, people and not property would
have perished.

The fear in Belfast, among consitutional unionists and nationalists alike, is
that the loyalists - who pledged not to return to terrorism before the IRA -
will seize on the bombing as an excuse for sectarian murders.

Like the republican movement, the loyalists have been divided by the
ceasefire, and factions within the UDA and UVF have grown impatient with
the non-release of loyalist "political prisoners".

But, unlike the republicans, most loyalists seem to think that the cessation
has not harmed their cause. Men like David Ervine, the main Progressive
Unionist Party spokesman, are irrevocably committed to a peace strategy -
and know well that, like Gerry Adams, their leadership would not survive its
collapse intact.

It is impossible to predict what a movement as fissiparous as the loyalists
will do. However, they have reason to stay their hand. London has been
bombed, not Protestant towns in Ulster. "Why should we now join the IRA
as the object of international opprobrium?" said one loyalist source.

Mainstream unionists see their refusal to trust the republicans as vindicated.
David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, portrayed the bombing as an
attempt by the IRA to evade elections.

He will now redouble his efforts to bring about an elected peace convention
before the summer is out.

The Government will surely take this electoral route, and not only because
of the dependence upon Unionist votes in the Commons: to do otherwise,
now, would look like capitulation to terrorism.

The bomb has, for the moment, blown any immediate prospect of
Unionist-Sinn Fein talks. So the Unionists, once a peace convention is
elected, will be forced to split the SDLP from Sinn Fein, and hammer out a
deal mainly concerning Northern Ireland alone.

But the odds of luring John Hume's party away from the three-stranded
"peace process" look to be long. Sooner or later, the Unionists are likely to
demand that the convention only has a future as a fully fledged assembly.

The odds of the Unionists getting their way in this respect look better than
they have for a very long time.

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Vague warnings hindered police
==============================

   POLICE tactics in clearing South Quay of office workers and
commuters have been criticised. Sean O'Neill and Neil Darbyshire report on
the confused 80 minutes that led up to the explosion.

TONY Sharp was talking on the telephone in the telesales department of
Franklin Mint in Docklands when the IRA bomb exploded, shattering the
computer screen on his desk and firing sharp fragments into his face. Glass
was embedded in his eye, cut his nose and cheeks and sliced through his
clothing.

"I fell straight down, then got straight up and rushed out the fire exit. I could
feel my face covered in blood and didn't know what state I was in," he said.
"I didn't know what was going on. It was pandemonium."

But it was pandemonium that should have been avoided. Half an hour earlier
the staff of the building had been evacuated as security guards responded to
warnings from police officers searching the area around South Quay
Docklands Light Railway station.

Franklin Mint workers had gathered outside the rear of the building, some
50 yards from where the lorry bomb was parked, only to be told minutes
later by security staff that it was safe to go back in again.

Mr Sharp, recovering from his injuries at the Royal London Hospital, said:
"We were told everything was safe. We were told to carry on working and
were still on the phone taking orders when it all went off."

The confusion at Franklin Mint was mirrored all around the area. Some
buildings were evacuated, others were alerted to the danger but people were
told to stay inside. Many knew nothing until the bomb - up to 1,000lb of
explosives - exploded.

Since 5.41 pm, when Scotland Yard was first alerted by a call from RTE
radio in Dublin, police from Limehouse had been searching for the vehicle
or package that might contain a bomb.

Further, unspecific, warnings were relayed from news organisations in
Belfast and Dublin. The bomb was said to be "at South Quay station or in
the general area of Canary Wharf".

Assistant Commissioner Anderson Dunn, chief of police in north-east
London, said the vagueness of the warnings made his officers' task
extremely difficult.

"Had we known exactly where this device was and when it was going to blow
up, it would have been a more simple matter to organise a full evacuation,"
he said. "But it is an IRA tactic to be non-specific, making it almost
impossible for us to get it right."

Mr Dunn initially sent four officers to clear the station and turn commuters
away. Train services south beyond Canary Wharf were suspended at 6pm.
Over the next hour 16 more officers were sent to clear the streets, erect a
cordon to keep people and traffic out, and examine parked vehicles.

Hugh Bray, buildings manager of Beaufort Close, a six-storey block 200
yards from the bomb, encountered the cordon as he tried to return to his
office at 6.20pm. He spoke to officers but was not told why the area had been
sealed off.

Back at his building, security staff were not connected to the security pager
system which police said delivered an early alert to many buildings in the
area.

At 6.57 pm, Zafar Sharif, an accountant, left his office in Beaufort Court to
drive home and discovered that he was on the wrong side of the security
cordon.

"I wound down the window and asked the policeman what was going on,"
said Mr Sharif, 37. "The officer said there was a bomb scare. He didn't tell
me I should get out of the area quickly, there wasn't any urgency in his
voice."

At the same time, Pc Roger de Graaf and colleagues who were searching the
area around South Quay spotted what they thought must be the bomb.

The officers had cleared the station and, as further warnings were received,
steadily widened the security cordon. Most vehicles had been cleared from
the area, but a flat back lorry parked outside South Quay Plaza attracted
suspicion. 

"We were all standing next to it, and we said 'Maybe this one shouldn't be
here', " said Pc de Graaf.

After a few cautious checks they decided they had found the bomb and
rushed to the nearest office blocks to order evacuation.

Several businesses who did not receive warnings said they would seek
meetings with the police to discuss security plans.

But the police, severely hampered by the deliberate vagueness of the
warnings and with officers risking their lives to find the bomb, defended
their tactics.

Mr Dunn said: "In general terms, it is safer to keep people inside than have
them walking around the streets where there may be a bomb going off at any
time."

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Peace drive must go on, says victim's family
============================================


By Hugh Muir
============


   THE FAMILY of Inan Ul-Haq Bashir, the newsagent murdered in the
IRA bomb attack on Canary Wharf, yesterday called on the Government to
continue the drive for peace.

As relatives gathered at his home in Streatham, south London, Mr Bashir's
brother, Ishan, condemned the attack and paid tribute to as "a lovely man".

But in a statement issued through the Metropolitan Police, the family also
expressed their wish that negotiations would not be scuppered by the
outrage.

"They wish to voice their support for the elected government of this country
and they hope the peace process continues," a spokesman said. "They have
lost a brother, a son, and a family friend. They hope these losses are not in
vain."

Mr Bashir, 28, was single and worked for his brother who owned the kiosk
near South Quay station in London's Docklands. 

John Jeffries, the second victim, was working alongside Mr Bashir at the
kiosk when the explosion occurred and Ishan Ul-Haq Bashir also spoke of
his sadness at the death of Mr Jeffries. "John was like a brother to me," he
said.

In Bromley, Kent, where Mr Jeffries lived, he was remembered as a
good-natured man and a "perfect son".

He was 31, but chose to remain in the family home - an end-of-terrace
council property in Bromley, Kent - to help his father, a retired carpenter,
to pay the bills.

The pair were often referred to as "Big John" and "Little John". Local
people recalled how the son, who was also nicknamed "JJ", always greeted
them with a smile.

His joviality extended to work at newspaper kiosks in Docklands, King's
Cross, Liverpool Street and Mansion House where Mr Jeffries - a keen
musician - would occasionally sing Simon and Garfunkel songs to amuse his
customers.

The natural closeness between father and son had been cemented by
difficult circumstances. 

His mother, Mary, died more 10 years ago after a long struggle with
agoraphobia, and his aunt died a few months ago. 

His father was yesterday being comforted by relatives at secret address but
before leaving his home, he spoke of his hatred for the IRA and told
reporters of how his worst fears were confirmed.

A phone call alerted him to the fact that John had been working in South
Quay when the bomb exploded. "I went to Canary Wharf and tried to see if
my son's name was on the list of the injured but it wasn't there. I couldn't
find out anything."

He added: "I expect in the papers, the IRA will blame the British
Government for this bomb but all you have to do is to look at the injuries
from the explosion and you know whose fault it is. The IRA are to blame.
They are not interested in peace."

As the families grieved, relatives of those seriously injured waited for news.

Among them was Farid Berrezag, 17, whose father Zaoui, 55, is critically ill
in the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel.

Mr Berrezag, a cleaner, was hit by a piece of metal which pierced his brain. 

Farid was also injured by flying debris as he sat with his father in a car 50
yards from the blast. 

The dead and injured were remembered in services held at St Luke's Church
in Millwall, a few hundred yards from the explosion.

The Rev Christopher Owens said: "We have held this service today to try to
help the people of Millwall come to terms with what has happened.

"We prayed for the dead and injured and for their families and that this sort
of thing should never happen again."

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TIMETABLE
=========

o 5.41pm: Scotland Yard takes first call from RTE in Dublin which has
received warning of bomb at South Quay station. Police sent to begin
evacuation.

o 5.55pm: Docklands Light Railway stops trains running through South Quay.
Passengers cleared from station.

o 5.59pm: Fourth of a series of calls to Scotland Yard from news organisations
contacted by the IRA. None identifies where bomb is.

o 6.00pm: RTE receives statement signed by P O'Neill announcing end of IRA
ceasefire. It took 30 minutes to authenticate statement.

o 6.15pm: 20 police officers now at South Quay; security cordon in place.
People and vehicles cleared off streets, but many are in buildings inside the
cordon, including Trade Winds bar.

o 6.30pm : Staff of Franklin Mint at South Quay plaza evacuated, but
readmitted after security guards wrongly announce all-clear.

o 6.59pm: Police officers find flat-backed lorry containing bomb and try to
clear surrounding offices.

o 7.01pm: Bomb explodes. Hundreds of workers still at their desks in nearby
buildings.

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Explosion leaves a �100m fallout
================================

Insurers assess damage as firms struggle back to work
=====================================================

By Sandra Barwick, Sean O'Neill and Tom Rowland

THE COST of the IRA's explosion in London's docklands was yesterday
estimated at more than �100 million.

John Gale, development director of Harris Claims, which has five clients in
the area, said: "We're looking at a picture of colossal damage. �100 million
would be a conservative estimate when you start counting business
interruption insurance."

He thought many business would have to re-equip and move. Full structural
examinations have not been carried out on all buildings.

"But the damage is severe," said Mr Gale. "There is going to have to be a
certain amount of controlled demolition."

Eric Sorensen, chief executive of the London Dockland Development
Corporation, said that it would be some time before accurate figures were
available.

"But my estimate is between �40 and �80 million just for the damage to the
buildings," he said.

Surveyors have been working at the scene in South Quay in the Isle of Dogs
in east London since Saturday to assess the extent of the damage. Some
buildings have already been designated as unsafe. A large area will remain
sealed off today.

The three buildings in the South Quay complex have been badly damaged,
along with the building which housed the Midland Bank opposite the South
Quay light railway station and the Waterside building to the west of South
Quay.

Two buildings at Mill Harbour were also damaged, along with Harbour
Exchange and Tower Hamlets housing office at Mill Hill.

Andrew Neale, disaster manager for the Thomas Howell Group, said teams
of loss adjustors were working round the clock.

"Access is still restricted because some buildings are dangerous," he said.

More than 650 homes belonging to Tower Hamlets council in the area have
also been structurally damaged, many on its Barkantine estate, on West
Ferry Road, south of the South Quay blast.

The estimates are relatively modest compared to the Bishopsgate bomb,
which exploded in the City of London in April 1993 and resulted in
insurance claims of �500 million.

Experts said yesterday that the blast impact was different from the
Bishopsgate bomb. The buildings at South Quay were more scattered than in
the narrow streets of the Square Mile.

However, the damage to individual structures could be more severe because
the Docklands buildings are mostly made from glass and metal, unlike the
older stone structures in many parts of the City.

The relatively low level of the development is an advantage. The main site at
South Quay consists of three buildings ranging in height from nine to 19
stories.

But glass was heavily used in the design.

South Quay Tower itself featured extensive glazing, intended to make it
reflect and blend with the sky. On Friday night, glass showered from the sky.
Even yesterday, with the wind blowing in strong gusts, there was constant
threat of shards of glass falling from upper storeys.

South Quay cost �84 million to build. About 18 months ago Capital &
Provident Management paid �7 million, on behalf of clients, for 360,000
square feet of the development.

A spokesman for Dockland Light Railway said a limited service would run
between Bank and Canary Wharf, Stratford and Canary Wharf, and from
Beckton to Tower Bridge today. A bus service will run between Canary
Wharf and Island Gardens.

A full service is not expected to resume for at least a week.

Yesterday, companies with offices in South Quay were working out plans for
temporary relocation.

Bell Cable Media plc, whose technical centre in South Quay was badly hit,
and whose offices on three floors of the Harbour Exchange Buildings nearby
had their windows shattered, was fully operational within hours of the blast.

The technical centre, in the Enterprise Business Park on Marsh Wall,
received cable TV feeds and was a telephone centre for 10,000 local
customers. The building has been pronounced structurally unsound.

"The technical side was in a reinforced part of the building and we only lost
three terminals with the blast," said Denise Lewis, head of corporate affairs,
for Bell, the third largest cable TV and telecommunication company in the
UK.

Within three hours a full service had been resumed. The company, which
has four offices in Docklands, said it would be staying there. "We are
committed to the area and confident of its future," said Miss Lewis.

Telos, the Swiss computer software firm, whose offices in Beaufort Close
were badly damaged, was back at work yesterday.

Julian Hilton, managing director, said Telos was "a virtual company" with a
small number of staff all over the world who could work on their portable
computers from anywhere there was power and a phone line.

"Tomorrow we will probably be dispersed in people's homes - two of our
staff live in Docklands," he said. "We are able to replicate our office almost
anywhere."

The Midland Bank, which had 50 people working at a branch and
administrative office at Marsh Wall, has moved its administrative staff to
offices in the City. Some of its branch staff will move to its Stratford branch.

National Westminster Bank, which has about 130 staff in offices and a small
branch in Marsh Wall, said its offices had suffered mostly minor damage to
windows, ceilings and doors. Staff were being moved to other offices and
branches. 

Like many of the companies in South Quay, it was hoping that telephone
lines would be switched through to the relocated staff so that customers
ringing in to their usual number would be answered as normal.

The Guardian newspaper has a printing works in the Enterprise Business
Park which appears to have suffered structural damage. It swapped printing
to Manchester and West Ferry Printers in Docklands.

Abbey National, which has a small branch in South Quay's shopping centre
employing around 10 staff, has relocated them to the Barbican or Blackfriars
in the City of London.

Franklin Mint, which bought the building which used to house the Daily
Telegraph in South Quay, is hoping to resume a full service by Wednesday
from different offices.

The explosion is likely to make the 2.8 million sq ft of empty property in
Docklands even harder to let.

Before the blast, rents near the scene of the bomb had been struggling to
sustain �6 per square foot plus an extended rent free period for new
buildings, compared with more than �30 per square foot in the City and
West End.

However, Mr Sorensen did not believe the explosion would reduce the
attraction of Docklands to new businesses. He said: "This is an appalling
event but I think people will realise how much this area has changed for the
better."

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Security: Scotland Yard orders anti-terrorist review
====================================================

By Richard Savill and Neil Darbyshire
=====================================

SCOTLAND Yard is to review the strength of its security branches in the
aftermath of the Docklands bombing.

After 17 months of the IRA ceasefire, the anti-terrorist branch was reduced
by 20 officers to 97 last year and the remaining detectives have recently been
engaged in investigations with only tenuous links to terrorism.

But the branch commander, John Grieve, said yesterday that the unit had
never been depleted to critical levels and was still in a strong position to
react to the new outbreak of violence.

"My squad was never run down," he said. "It was always ready to go, as it was
ready to go on Friday night. As the threat emerges, we will look further at
the staffing levels."

For MI5, in charge of intelligence gathering on Irish terrorism, and Special
Branch units around the country the South Quay explosion will probably
end immediate speculation that their numbers are to be cut.

Amid fears of a possible resumption of attacks on military targets in
Northern Ireland, the RUC is re-introducing "prudent" security measures in
the province.

Sub-machine guns and rifles have not been carried by officers for several
months but were seen on the streets of Belfast over the weekend.

Intelligence assessments will be closely analysed in the coming days but an
indicator of the gravity of the threat will come if the RUC Chief Constable,
Sir Hugh Annesley, deems it necessary to put troops back on the streets. A
security source said: "Because of the softening of policing posture, the
principal worry is that police officers should not be exposed to attack.

"The intention is to raise the security profile sufficiently to provide them
with protection.

"If direct attacks do start then there would obviously be an increased
response. Some of the fortifications that have been removed around police
stations may have to be restored."

Security sources said there were no immediate plans for the return of the
Army in support of RUC patrols in Belfast and Londonderry.

But troops would continue to patrol in border areas of south Armagh and Co
Fermanagh, where there has never been a complete reduction of military
support in a effort to prevent the IRA smuggling guns and bombs into the
province.

Their stockpile of 80 to 100 tons of weapons was largely moved south of the
border when the ceasefire was called and kept under the firm control of the
leadership to prevent any dissident acts of terrorism.

Since the ceasefires, 1,600 troops have been withdrawn from Northern
Ireland, leaving 16,750 soldiers. Most have been returned to barracks.

In other security measures at the weekend, minor roads leading to Belfast
International Airport were re-sealed and there was an increase in the
number of random road checkpoints. One possibility is that marked police
patrol cars introduced since the ceasefire may have to be withdrawn.

Plans being pushed forward to remove the RUC guards on politicians and
judges may have to be abandoned if there are indications that the violence is
to resume in Northern Ireland.

Sir John Wheeler, Northern Ireland security minister, said the tightening of
the security measures was a matter for the RUC and he would back the Chief
Constable in any move he advocated.

Troops could be returned to the province quickly if needed, he added.

He said: "I can give the people of Northern Ireland this absolute guarantee.
The RUC didn't let them down for 25 years and they won't now.

"If it is necessary to restore all of the security measures that will be done.

"The RUC will approach this on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis.

"They will put back into place those measures that are necessary to protect
lives.

"The moment this terrorist bomb went off measures were put in hand to put
the RUC on full alert. They will be suuprted as necessary by the Army."

There has been a gradual reduction of security measures throughout
Northern Ireland over the past 17 months.

The changes are largely cosmetic, however, and it was always intended that
they could quickly be reversed if the ceasefires collapsed.

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American view: Clinton has been conned, says Trimble
====================================================

By Stephen Robinson in Washington
=================================

DAVID TRIMBLE will tell the Clinton administration today that it is time
to admit that it has been "conned" by Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein, the
Ulster Unionist Party leader said yesterday.

President Clinton's circle of advisers on Ireland, however, is publicly
standing by the Sinn Fein leader. "If anyone can get the ceasefire back on
track, it's Gerry Adams," said one adviser. Mr Trimble's meeting with
Anthony Lake, the national security adviser, at the White House today was
arranged before Friday's IRA bomb which threw into disarray the
administration's complicated diplomatic intervention in Ulster. 

White House sources indicated that Mr Clinton would drop in on the
meeting in Mr Lake's office for a first-hand briefing on Unionist attitudes
now that the ceasefire has been broken. During past visits to Washington
since he became party leader, Mr Trimble has established polite and
businesslike relations with the White House, though he is not accorded the
celebrity status of Mr Adams.

The White House is trying to reassess its strategy of direct involvement in
Northern Ireland now that Mr Adams, their main interlocutor, has been so
publicly undermined. Sending an emissary - probably Mr Lake - is under
discussion, though nothing is thought to be imminent.

Downing Street is cool about the idea of a "special envoy" while there is so
much confusion in Belfast and disagreement with Dublin. George Mitchell, 
the former Senator who is head of the disarmament body, is due in London
next week for a previously arranged visit on matters unrelated to Northern
Ireland. Though he technically reports to London and Dublin rather than to
Washington, his trip could be turned into an unofficial shuttle mission.

Mr Trimble, speaking in Washington, criticised the Irish prime minister for
suggesting that Mr Major's demand for elections had contributed to the
crisis.

He said John Bruton was being "very silly" even to raise that issue at the
moment, and added that the "hysterical attitude in Dublin over the past
fortnight has not helped" in the breakdown of the ceasefire.

British diplomats in Washington and Mr Trimble are anxious to counter
efforts by Mr Adams to enlist support in pressing for immediate all-party
talks as a concession to the IRA.

In public at least, there is no sign yet of the administration distancing itself
from Mr Adams, who is still regarded as the best hope of restoring the
ceasefire. "When you have been conned, you're reluctant to admit it," Mr
Trimble said.

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    Ray.... 
    
    Reading .5 again the sentence that says "Nobody can blame HMG for the
    bombing BUT etc. etc." I find quite amusing.
            ^^^
    I expect you do condemn the bombing, there's no doubting that in my
    mind and I never said otherwise.
    
    The "world record" comment was because I think that's the fastest 
    contradiction I've ever seen in notes.i.e. No one blames them but I
    must quickly point out something that they could/should be blamed for
    which has resulted in the bombing.
    
    That's the way I read it anyway. If it's wrong then I am sorry.
    
    
    CHARLEY

Re .4

>    What a disgusting and cynical act. It is utterly contemptable, and
>    completely without justification.
    
Laurie,
	I couldn't have put it better myself.

	That's exactly what I think of the British Government's 
	disgraceful and disgusting act of refusing to enthusiastically 
	pursue an all to rare opportunity for peace in NI.

	Before I get bombarded with the obvious question here is my 
	answer :-

	* Yes I condemn the bombing on Friday. There is never any 
	justification for the loss of human life.

	The graphic descriptions which have been posted from the Telegraph
	are horrifying. Did the Telegraph or any other British paper give
	similar graphic details of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings or
	the Bloody Sunday massacre? I condemn this and every other IRA 
	bombing while successive British governments have refused to 
	condemn the two (and many other) atrocities to which I refered in
	my previous sentence.

	While I in now way support the bombing it should be remembered that
	had it been detonated two hours earlier the dead would have been
	counted in the thousands.

	I suspect that this bombing may be a one off "shot across the bows"
	to re-focus the world's attention on the British Government's 
	intrasigence. There are many similarities between this recent 
	attack and the last major London bomb which blew up the Baltic
	Exchange. Both of these will cost the British Insurance companies
	a fortune. (Conservative estimates quoted in the Telegraph extracts
	in replies to the base note are around �100 million). It was only
	after the Baltic Exchange bombing that the British Government 
	started to talk to SF. Businesses in and around London will soon
	get fed up with the interruptions to their businesses, the 
	rebuilding after bombs, the increasing cost of insurance and the
	worries of their employess.

	Let's think about those two innocent men who died needlessly in 
	this shameful act of violence. Let us think of the families of 
	these dead men. Let us think of the innocent people suffering in
	hospital and those who will carry the mental scars with them for
	the rest of their lives. Let us hope and pray that the people of
	this country will think about peace in NI and how it can be 
	attained. Most of the replies in this note so far seem to be
	attempting to breed more hatred rather than seek peace. Let us
	think on how the people of the UK can make the Government see that
	human life is more valuable than money and that no successful peace
	talks have ever begun with the precondition of unilateral 
	disarmament.
	
Eddie$sickened
    

    .40
    
    >That's exactly what I think of the British Government's disgraceful and
    disgusting act of refusing to enthusiastically pursue an all to rare
    opportunity for peace in NI.<
    
    All pro-British factions have pursued the peace initiative. Friday's
    bombing is proof that the I.R.A. are not interested in any form of
    peace that doesn't give them the largest slice of the cake when they
    are one of the smallest minories.
    
    
    >Did the Telegraph or any other British paper give similar graphic
    details of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings or the Bloody Sunday
    massacre?<
    
    Strangely enough they also didn't carry pictures of the Guildford and 
    Birmingham pub bombings, the Harrods Christmas Bombing, the Warrington 
    Bombing, the Hyde Park Bombing, the rememberance day bombing at Enniskillen,
    pictures of British soldiers after they've been shot through the head
    by snipers, the little girl who has no legs after her grandfather was
    blown to smithereens (big security risk he must have been). and all of
    the countless other I.R.A  bombings in which innocent civilians have lost
    their lives.
    
    Save your breath Eddie, you've got no argument.
    
    >it should be remembered that had it been detonated two hours earlier the 
    dead would have been counted in the thousands<
    
    Are we supposed to be thankful for this???  
    
    Piss off.
    
    
    CHARLEY

           <<< Note 1548.40 by TAGART::EDDIE "Easy doesn't do it" >>>
                    -< Disgusting and cynical --- as usual >-


>	That's exactly what I think of the British Government's 
>	disgraceful and disgusting act of refusing to enthusiastically 
>	pursue an all to rare opportunity for peace in NI.

        Whilst I agree, that Major seems to be putting his own
        perilous , political position before trying to work towards a
        solution -  which ever way you cut it , ( although I imagine some 
        dyed in the wool Republicans might disagree ), the Loyalist 
	paramilitaries, the RUC and British Army , have not fired a shot
        in direct action since the ceasefire. ( I have deliberately not
        mentioned Direct Action Against Drugs because "informed" sources
        in this conference tell us that they have absolutely nothing to
        so with the military/political struggle). 


>	Before I get bombarded with the obvious question here is my 
>	answer :-

>	* Yes I condemn the bombing on Friday. There is never any 
>	justification for the loss of human life.

         Good ... common ground.


>	The graphic descriptions which have been posted from the Telegraph
>	are horrifying. Did the Telegraph or any other British paper give
>	similar graphic details of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings or
>	the Bloody Sunday massacre? I condemn this and every other IRA 
>	bombing while successive British governments have refused to 
>	condemn the two (and many other) atrocities to which I referred in
>	my previous sentence.

        I don't normally read the Telegraph, but the footage of Bloody 
        Sunday which seems to be aired with the passing of every other
        outrage , still makes me cringe. But let us not forget that 
        was before the peace process, and begs the question as to how
        far and how long, people need to go back in history. What happened
        to the future?


>	While I in now way support the bombing it should be remembered that
>	had it been detonated two hours earlier the dead would have been
>	counted in the thousands.

        Not one of your better arguments.


>	I suspect that this bombing may be a one off "shot across the bows"
>	to re-focus the world's attention on the British Government's 
>	intrasigence. There are many similarities between this recent 
>	attack and the last major London bomb which blew up the Baltic
>	Exchange. Both of these will cost the British Insurance companies
>	a fortune. (Conservative estimates quoted in the Telegraph extracts
>	in replies to the base note are around �100 million). It was only
>	after the Baltic Exchange bombing that the British Government 
>	started to talk to SF. Businesses in and around London will soon
>	get fed up with the interruptions to their businesses, the 
>	rebuilding after bombs, the increasing cost of insurance and the
>	worries of their employees.

       

>	Let's think about those two innocent men who died needlessly in 
>	this shameful act of violence. Let us think of the families of 
>	these dead men. Let us think of the innocent people suffering in
>	hospital and those who will carry the mental scars with them for
>	the rest of their lives. Let us hope and pray that the people of
>	this country will think about peace in NI and how it can be 
>	attained. Most of the replies in this note so far seem to be
>	attempting to breed more hatred rather than seek peace. Let us
>	think on how the people of the UK can make the Government see that
>	human life is more valuable than money and that no successful peace
>	talks have ever begun with the precondition of unilateral 
>	disarmament.
	
        In the short term it costs the insurance companies millions - the
        long term ..its cost ordinary people. The same ordinary people who
        have been supporting the peace process. The same ordinary people
        who may eventually say..."ok let Britain pull out of Ireland, and let 
        'them' get on with it".  The same ordinary people who's lives are
        being ruined and sometimes taken away by idealogues who believe that
        talk is surrender. F*** them and everyone who supports that line of
        thinking. A long term solution *WILL NOT* be achieved by violence.


        Stuart

    RE .42
    
    Lest I be misunderstood ....
    
    My comments about the London bomb being exploded at 19:00 instead of
    earlier in the day were made to indicate that the likely intention was
    to inflict economic damage rather than to deliberately cause loss of
    life. I would speculate that if the IRA wanted maximum loss of life
    they would have detonated it at arounde 15:00. No-one needs to try and
    convince me that exploding a bomb in London, whatever the time of day
    is "attempted murder".
    
    To diverse slightly: All Irish people in England better practise their
    English accents because pressure will now be on to frame somebody for
    this and throw them in jail quickly. If they only find one culprit he
    can get Lee Clegg's cell.
    
    Re .41
    
    > piss off
    
    Good strong logical argument CHARLEY! I can't argue with that ;-)
    
    Ed.

    .43
    
    >If they only find one culprit he can get Lee Clegg's cell.<
    
    Yeah why not, that cell must be used to holding innocent people. We agree on
    something at last Eddie.
    
    
    CHARLEY 

           <<< Note 1548.43 by TAGART::EDDIE "Easy doesn't do it" >>>
                              -< for the record >-
<snip>


>    My comments about the London bomb being exploded at 19:00 instead of
>    earlier in the day were made to indicate that the likely intention was
>    to inflict economic damage rather than to deliberately cause loss of
>    life. I would speculate that if the IRA wanted maximum loss of life
>    they would have detonated it at arounde 15:00. No-one needs to try and
>    convince me that exploding a bomb in London, whatever the time of day
>    is "attempted murder".
 
     Am I not right in thinking that pro-IRA Republicans ( and I know 
     that not all republicans are pro-IRA ), believe that the IRA is a 
     military organisation , fighting a legitimate war. I therefore can
     sort of understand the logic in attacking "legitimate military targets"
     ( not military bands - even if they do sound god awful ), but I 
     cannot understand what purpose is sought in blowing up shopping centres
     or other civilian targets.

   
>    To diverse slightly: All Irish people in England better practise their
>    English accents because pressure will now be on to frame somebody for
>    this and throw them in jail quickly. If they only find one culprit he
>    can get Lee Clegg's cell.
 

    As an Englishman I am not proud of some of the treatment that has been
    indiscrimately meted out to people with Irish accents. I know enough
    who have , in the past , suffered because of others interest. 
  
    I'm not sure about the Clegg refernce. I do no feel it serves any 
    constructive purpose.
     
   
 >   Re .41
    
 >   > piss off
    
 >   Good strong logical argument CHARLEY! I can't argue with that ;-)
    
   
     I agree. Come on Charley, this kind of stuff devalues your argument,
     just as blindly reposting propaganda devalues others.


     Stuart

.43
    > I would speculate that if the IRA wanted maximum loss of life
    > they would have detonated it at arounde 15:00. 

And I would speculate that if the IRA wanted minimum loss of life they 
would have detonated it at around 03:00 and given a more precise warning.

You are apologising for scum beneath contempt.

Dave

    It seems pretty clear to me that the bombing was decided opon at the
    last meeting of the IRA Army Council. It also appears that the decision
    was taken so as to avoid a split in the IRA between the Hard Liners and
    those in favour of a more peacefull stance. The last IRA split nearly
    cripled the IRA and still bears sharply in the minds of those on the
    council. I believe that Gerry Adams was aware of the intention to bomb
    but was not aware when. The British Security Forces were also aware
    that something was in the air but they believed that the IRA would wait
    till the end of febuary as Major and Bruton had already set this as a
    pro-viso deadline to all party talks - I think Adams was of the same
    assumption.
    
    The timing of the event gives rise to interesting questions. Martin
    McGuiness was rumoured recently to have resigned his post on the Army
    Council...after the last meeting....and thus was also aware of the
    intention to bomb. Although considered charismatic, he is in fact a lot
    harder than Adams. His reasonably low profile during the last eighteen
    months, compared to Adams, has smakings of 'awaiting in the wings'. I
    believe that there has been a power strugle within the IRA and that Mc
    Guiness has now effectivly pushed Adams into the wilderness.
    
    The British, American and Irish Governments will want a new face to
    negociate with. Adams has had his chance and lost it. Personaly,
    McGuiness is a lesser diplomat. If the cease-fire does get re-instated
    after this 'shot across the bows' bombing then he will be a hard man to
    negociate with. The three concerned governments, howevere, have had
    their wills strngthened by this bombing and will thus expect more
    assurances from the IRA that their cease-fire is permanent...assurances
    that I believe the IRA will not be able to provide.
    
    The only way Adams can save his 'political' career is to condemn the
    bombing and comit Sinn Fein to peacefull negociation. However, what
    interest do the governments concerned have in dealing with a minority
    nationalist party that has now restraining power over the IRA ?
    
    Sad times ahead I'm afraid!
    
    Shaun.

apparently another bomb has been found in London and defused.  It was quite 
close to a Digital office, for anyone who's interested.  The IRA are said to 
have released a statement that their bombing campaign will continue.

I'm getting pretty pissed off about this.  Something must be done, and that 
something must not be to give in to their demands, otherwise they'll just 
revert to these tactics again whenever they want their way.

Chris.

Apparently it was in Shaftesbury Avenue - the heart of London's theatre land.

Nice folk, these IRA types - not content with trying to kill office workers
they're now aiming at tourists, actors, singers and dancers.

Would any of their apologists care to describe what group of talented people
the IRA want to try murdering next?

//atp

The bomb was found about 5 minutes from the Digital Office. 

Stuart

    Hmm, this is very bad news. Which Office was it BTW ?
    
    It is only a matter of time before the UVF start up.
    
    There is an article in today's Irish Times, unfortunately not in their
    electronic edition, concerning the mindset of IRA volunteers.  I quote
    
    "We will take on the Brits like never before...there will be bombs all
    over Britain. John Major will be sorry he ever messed us about" 
    
    "Another <IRA> source warns that the UVF and the UDA should "think
    twice" before calling off their ceasefire. "If the loyalist death
    squads go back to killing Catholics they will be swiftly dealt with."
    
    I'm getting angry too, Chris, and this is NOT an apology for what is
    happening, but my anger is also directed at those who fiddled and
    played party politics and destabilised the peace.
    
    Kevin

The Electronic Telegraph  Thursday 15 February 1996  Home News

500 troops fly back to Northern Ireland
=======================================

By Richard Savill, Irish Correspondent
======================================

   FIVE hundred troops are to be flown into Northern Ireland today as
the Government steps up security in the province and on the mainland after 
the ending of the IRA ceasefire.

Soldiers of the First Battalion, the Royal Irish Regiment, based at Catterick,
North Yorks, are to be posted to bases in the South Armagh and Co
Fermanagh border areas.

The move came as the Irish government announced that officials will meet
the Sinn Fein leadership tomorrow, a week after the IRA bomb in
Docklands.

Dublin wants Sinn Fein to persuade the IRA to restore the ceasefire so that
talks at ministerial level can resume.

But Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president, has given no indication that he is
willing to do so unless there is movement towards all-party talks. Mr Adams
is due to make a speech in Belfast tonight.

Security sources in Belfast said the arrival of the extra troops in support of
the Royal Ulster Constabulary was not intended to signify any large-scale
increase in military patrolling.

"This is very much considered to be a prudent, precautionary measure," said
a source. RUC officers are continuing to patrol without soldiers in most
parts except border areas.

Unionists welcomed the move but Sinn Fein accused Britain of "indecent
haste". John Taylor, Ulster Unionist MP for Strangford, said the
Government was correct in taking precautions. 

The 500 soldiers brings the number of troops in Northern Ireland back up to
about 17,000. Three units, totalling about 1,600 men, were withdrawn in the
wake of the 1994 ceasefire.


In other security measures, soldiers are wearing helmets instead of berets.

Security blocks have re-appeared on roads leading to the South Armagh
village of Bessbrook where the Army has a heliport to ferry troops to border
areas.

There was no indication last night that John Bruton, Irish prime minister, is
re-considering his decision to end ministerial contacts with Sinn Fein.
However, civil servants are to meet the Sinn Fein leadership tomorrow.

Albert Reynolds, the former Irish prime minister, who met Mr Adams in
Dundalk on Tuesday, said he was pessimistic about the IRA agreeing to
another ceasefire unless there was significant movement towards setting up
all-party talks.

Mr Bruton is to discuss the ending of the IRA ceasefire with President
Clinton in Washington next month.

John Hume, the leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour
Party, held a meeting in Strasbourg yesterday with Ian Paisley, leader of the
hardline Democratic Unionist Party. They agreed that delegates from their
parties would hold talks in Belfast next week.

Mr Hume, who is opposed to elections as a precursor to all-party talks, said
everything would be on the agenda.

o Neil Tweedie and John Steele write: Reservoirs around London were
closed to anglers, yachtsmen and birdwatchers indefinitely yesterday as
water chiefs responded to heightened security fears. In a letter to sailing
clubs on Monday, Thames Water said the decision had been taken as a result
of the Docklands attack and following "Home Office guidance."

Yesterday MPs were warned by the office of the Serjeant-at-Arms not to
conduct interviews on College Green outside Westminster on security
grounds.

o At least two buildings hit by Friday's blast will have to be demolished.

The South Quay Plaza shopping centre, where two men died, and the
five-storey offices of business magazine publishers Builder's Group are
thought too badly damaged to save.

A London Docklands Development Corporation spokesman said the district
surveyor had put unsafe structure notices on several buildings and owners
would have to demolish them or convince him that they were capable of
repair.

Seven Mills Nursery and Primary school on the Isle of Dogs suffered
�100,000 of damage and only reopened yesterday. Ninety of the 265 pupils
stayed away. "Some parents have said their children won't go out at because
they're scared and traumatised," said head teacher Mike Thurley.

o Deirdre McAliskey, 20, daughter of Bernadette McAliskey, formerly
Bernadette Devlin, the former nationalist MP for Mid-Ulster, is standing
today against Jonathan Taylor, 22, the son of the Ulster Unionist Party
deputy leader, John Taylor, for the presidency of the Students' Union at
Queen's University, Belfast.

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

                   <<< Note 1548.51 by MKTCRV::KMANNERINGS >>>

>    Hmm, this is very bad news. Which Office was it BTW ?
    
 
     Err...mine. HHL ( Enterprise House , London ).

    
     Stuart

>I'm getting pretty pissed off about this.  Something must be done, and that 
>something must not be to give in to their demands, otherwise they'll just 
>revert to these tactics again whenever they want their way.
>
>Chris.

Chris,

Given that the IRA are a bunch of evil psychopaths, what do you suggest
should be done?

Neil

>Given that the IRA are a bunch of evil psychopaths, what do you suggest
>should be done?

at the very least they should all be locked up.  However, trying to determine 
who is and who isn't a member of the IRA makes this quite difficult, as I 
don't believe they publish membership lists...

Chris.

Re .55

> at the very least they should all be locked up.  However, trying to determine 
> who is and who isn't a member of the IRA makes this quite difficult, as I 
> don't believe they publish membership lists...

Since when did the English police forces and justiciary become fussy about
putting the guilty people in jail.

Eddie.
    

>Since when did the English police forces and justiciary become fussy about
>putting the guilty people in jail.

I don't think they've ever been fussy about putting guilty people in gaol.

I wonder if you meant "innocent"?

And of course, there has never been an incorrect conviction in Scotland, or
the Republic of Irealdn, now, has there Eddie?

//atp

    Yeah right on Eddie.
    
    Again, thanks for your support for the innocent Lee Clegg.
    
    
    CHARLEY

Chris,

>at the very least they should all be locked up.  However, trying to determine 
>who is and who isn't a member of the IRA makes this quite difficult, as I 
>don't believe they publish membership lists...

I think something along these lines was attempted at the time of internment.
Do you have any reason to believe there could be a different outcome now?

I also wish that something could be done, but I really struggle to see what
that "something" is. It seems to me that we have to either live with the
violence (and for some, die with the violence) or admit that we need to
somehow placate the IRA... I'd love to hear workable suggestions for an
alternative.

Regards
Neil

    Re .57
    
    Oops!
    
    I meant that the English justiciary didn't care too much whether a
    person was guilty or not. As long as they had an Irish accent that was
    enough.
    
    There have been mis-carriages of justice in Scotland but nothing on the
    scale of the Birmingham six, the Guildford four etc. where evidence was
    deliberately falsified to "get a quick result".
    
    Alan, can you answer the following question with a simple "yes" or "no"
    answer:-
    
    Do you condemn the illegal imprisonment of innocent Irish people in
    English jails based on evidence which was falsified by the police?
    
    Eddie.

    .60
    
    Yes.
    
    
    CHARLEY$what's_your_point?

.61, seconded on both counts.

Chris.

re .60(?)

Yes.

regards,
//alan

Just over an hour ago (approx 10:40pm) another explosion was reported.  
Initial reports suggest a bomb was left on a bus, which exploded near Aldwych. 
Apparently 3 passengers were killed and a number of others are injured, 
although details are unclear at the moment.

Chris.

    There was speculation on R4 this morning that one of the dead was the
    bomber himself, killed on the way to planting it. Tough shit on him,
    but I feel for his family.
    
    Laurie.

>    There was speculation on R4 this morning that one of the dead was the
>    bomber himself, killed on the way to planting it. Tough shit on him,
>    but I feel for his family.

I heard that, too.  That would explain why there was no `warning' given, and 
why, as yet, nobody's admitted responsibility.

Chris.

    how many were killed? I listened to RTE 2FM this morning and it was not
    clear.
    
    
    It is likely that the bomber was on the bus alright, but that is my
    point. Excuse my anger in the other string on this, but if you send
    out teenagers with home made bombs, these things will happen, and to think
    you can 'manage' this on the phone or excuse it with 'warnings' is
    really an intolerable provocation.
    
        The desciption of the old people being brought into hospital from
    the bus was almost unbearable to read this morning...
    
    Kevin

Radio 4 this morning said 1 killed, a couple critical. The bus driver
was seriously injured but stable.

 --

The 'warnings' are usually vague, presumably with the intention of maximising  
the disruption beyond the bomb itself.  The questioning of the delay in
responding is another standard tactic, I would guess aimed at undermining
confidence in the security forces and spreading fear. 

But I would be being econonical with the truth if I said that I was suprised 
to see IRA propoganda posted in here.

Dave

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 19 February 1996  The Front Page



Bomb attack on London bus
*************************

Second device found at Waterloo
===============================

By Mark Storey, Simon Perry and Toby Harnden
============================================

  A double-decker bus - thought to be a 171 New Cross to Kings
  ============================================================
Cross - was destroyed in a bomb explosion in central London last night.
=======================================================================
No warning had been received from the IRA. Scotland Yard said there
===================================================================
were several casualties in the blast at 10.38pm in Wellington Street off
========================================================================
the Aldwych in the heart of the theatre district and one witness said he
========================================================================
was sure that some people had been killed. Ten people were believed to
======================================================================
be involved.

A second bomb device was found at nearby Waterloo Bridge after a warning
was received.

One witness at the Aldwych, Anthony Yates, 26, said: "I saw a big white
flash in the sky. There was nothing left of the bus. It was completely blown
to pieces."

He believed there could be three dead, but there was no immediate
confirmation of this.

Another witness said: "There is a guy lying outside the bus saying 'My legs,
my legs.' A driver and taxi driver are dead. The police did not even get a
warning."

Siamak Vatanabadi, a bus driver, said: "A bus has exploded. It's a terrible
scene. There are people injured there." A member of staff at the Waldorf
hotel in the Aldwych said: "We just heard a massive bang.

"We went out and a double-decker bus had been blown to smithereens."

One of the first on the scene was BBC radio reporter, Paul Rowan, who said:
"The entire bus seemed to be blown away. There was metal and glass for
around 50 yards all over the place.

"I saw one woman who looked in a very bad way. She was face down on the
road with bad-looking head injuries."

A tourist, Scott Grover, 32, from Boston, said: "We were walking along
when we suddenly heard this almighty bang.

"The front of the bus was completely blown away. But there didn't seem to
be many people in it and I don't know how many were injured. There was
debris everywhere."

As police helicopters circled the area, a loudspeaker message was blared
across the Strand telling people to get out.

It said: "This is a police message. Will you please leave the area
immediately."

A security guard at the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand said: "We just
heard a massive boom. There are police all over the place. It is chaos."

Another witness said he saw a taxi run into the back of the bus after it
exploded.

"The bus was blown to pieces. It is a terrible scene. I ran round to help
people and saw glass and blood in the road."

The National Westminster Bank in the Aldwych was also reported to have
been badly hit.

The explosion follows the discovery of a reported 11lb Semtex bomb in a bag
in phone box in Charing Cross Road in central London on Thursday, which
police defused.

It comes nine days after a bomb left inside a lorry at South Quay in
Docklands killed two people and injured more than a hundred.

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 19 February 1996  Home News

                          

�1m reward to catch bombers
===========================

By John Steele and Richard Savill
=================================

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

A REWARD of up to �1 million for information leading to the prosecution
of IRA terrorists was announced yesterday as police made arrests in
connection with the inquiry into the Docklands bombing.

The reward, the largest by far in an IRA case, was put up by unidentified
"members of the community" and is aimed in part at tempting organised
criminals with information about the terrorists to break ranks.

Last night police evacuated the Regent Street area of London after reports of
a suspect package in nearby Carnaby Street. The all-clear was given an hour
later.

The announcement of the reward was made by the head of Scotland Yard's
anti-terrorist branch, Cdr John Grieve, after arrests were made during dawn
raids on 30 addresses in London, Kent, Essex and the West Midlands.

The raids and arrests, none under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, focused
on the scrap and motor trades. Detectives were working on the theory that
some criminals in those trades might have helped the terrorists who drove
the lorry bomb to South Quay, where it killed two men, injured dozens of
other people and caused widespread damage.

Cdr Grieve said that "for obvious reasons" he could not be specific about
who had offered the �1 million, which represents about one per cent of the
estimated cost of the damage.

He added: "We will use every weapon we are given by our communities to
bring terrorists to justice. We know that some criminals are motivated by
money and we can all use that to get the information we need."

Cdr Grieve described the raids as a "pro-active, intelligence-led" operation,
the intelligence coming from the Special Branch and MI5.

The police also issued fresh details of the appearance and movements of the
South Quay lorry.

From information received from the public, they now know that the blue,
flat-back Ford vehicle containing the bomb and with a trailer on the back
was driven from Scotland to Carlisle over the night of Feb 7/8. By breakfast
time last Friday, Feb 9, it had reached South Mimms, Herts, travelling on to
Barking in Essex. There the trailer was taken off and the bomb - a mixture
of Semtex high explosive and fertilizer - was armed.

The lorry, which bore the registration number C292 GWG and carried a
stolen tax disc, was driven from there to South Quay on Friday afternoon.


Police appealed for information on its whereabouts for most of Thursday,
Feb 8, and particularly between South Mimms and Barking on the Friday
morning.

The anti-terrorist branch hotline is: 0800 789 321.

Sinn Fein yesterday faced the anger of the Dublin government over the
ending of the ceasefire as tens of thousands of people on both sides of the
Irish border protested against the resumption of IRA violence.

Dublin ministers are refusing to hold talks with Sinn Fein representatives
until the ceasefire is restored, though two senior officials met a delegation
from the party, led by the president Gerry Adams, at an undisclosed venue.

It was the first face-to-face talks since the Docklands bomb.

Dick Spring, the Irish deputy prime minister, said earlier that the two
officials would "give vent to the government's anger".

He urged people in the republic to wear white ribbons as a sign that they
opposed a return to IRA violence.

Peace rallies were held north and south of the border as British and Irish
officials tried to work out a compromise formula linking Dublin's proposal
for "proximity talks", similar to those in Dayton, Ohio, on Bosnia, with the
British plan for elections to a Northern Ireland discussion forum.

Mr Spring said that the government officials told Sinn Fein what London
and Dublin were trying to do to reinstate the ceasefire and to bring about
all-party talks as soon as possible.

In Dublin there are hopes that Mr Major and the Irish prime minister, John
Bruton, can hold their planned London summit within a fortnight.

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 19 February 1996  Home News

                          

On the trail of IRA bomb lorry
==============================

This article appeared in Saturday's edition of the Daily Telegraph

THE movements of the lorry that carried the Docklands bomb 
===========================================================
have been pieced together after "quite remarkable" help from the
================================================================
public 
=======
in the past seven days, police said yesterday, writes John Steele.
==================================================================

It came to Britain by sea, though Scotland Yard declined to say when. It was
driven from Stranraer, on the west coast of Scotland, to Carlisle, in
Cumbria, overnight on Wednesday Feb 7.

Cdr John Grieve, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, said it could
next be located at 8am on Friday Feb 9 in the area of South Mimms, Herts.
The area is a major motorway intersection - of the A1 and M25, with the
M1 nearby - and has featured as a meeting or collection point for terrorists
in previous cases.

Cdr Grieve said: "We don't know where it was for most of Feb 8."

On the Friday morning the blue lorry, carrying a red trailer, travelled by an
unknown route to Barking, in east London, and then to South Quay.

It travelled "by other than the direct route from South Mimms and we are
appealing for help from anyone who saw the vehicle".

The lorry arrived at waste land on River Road, Barking, during the afternoon
of Feb 9. The trailer was unloaded and the bomb armed, Cdr Grieve said.
The trailer has been recovered by police.

The anti-terrorist branch would be "very interested" in the lorry's
movements at this time, he added.

At about 4pm it was driven from Barking to South Quay, where it exploded
at 7.01pm. It is not known when it was placed there, though it is likely to
have been before Scotland Yard received its first warning of a bomb, at
5.41pm.

Detectives refuse to say whether they believe the lorry was carrying the
explosives when it arrived at Stranraer or whether the fertiliser mix was
loaded on the mainland. Both methods have been used in previous IRA
campaigns.

If the cumbersome task of loading up to 1,000lb of fertiliser mix into a lorry
was undertaken in Britain, the terrorists may have left traces or even have
been seen.

Cdr Grieve also issued details of an Irish number on the trailer - 5157B1.
"Very interestingly," he said, "the number also refers to a Ford cargo lorry,
this time one that has been cut up and destroyed." It was believed that the
trailer - "or maybe another vehicle bearing the registration 5157B1" - may
have been in Britain in January. Security sources have already suggested that
the IRA carried out bombing "dry runs" during the ceasefire.

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 19 February l996       The Front Page



Belfast split over Sinn Fein talks before new ceasefire
=======================================================

By Anthony King and George Jones
================================

Clinton keeps Adams in suspense as Bruton condemns IRA killers
Only desire for peace binds Ulster together 

BELFAST'S Protestant and Catholic communities are deeply divided over
whether Sinn Fein should be permitted to attend all-party talks before the
IRA has reintroduced its ceasefire, according to a special poll by Ulster
Marketing Surveys for The Daily Telegraph.

The poll, conducted since the IRA resumed its bombing campaign,
illustrates the difficulties facing John Major and his Irish counterpart, John
Bruton, as they search for ways of re-starting efforts to achieve a political
settlement in the province.

Although both communities are united in favouring all-party talks, there is
no agreement on how they should come about.

By large majorities, the Protestants say "no" to talks without a ceasefire,
while the Catholics say they should start even if the IRA does not call a halt
to the violence.

They are divided over the refusal of the British and Irish Governments to
talk to Sinn Fein until it has renounced violence. Most Protestants support
the two governments. Most Catholics do not.

Nor is there any agreement over Mr Major's proposal to hold elections in
Northern Ireland to choose the parties' representatives to all-party talks.
Most Protestants favour elections, while Catholics are opposed.

However, the two communities come much closer together on the principle
of all-party talks. Eighty per cent of Protestants in Belfast and 99 per cent of
Catholics are in favour.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, awaiting renewal of his American
visa, conceded that President Clinton's reported description of the IRA
London Docklands bombing as "damn stupid" was "perhaps a legitimate
response".

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 19 February l996       Home News


Clinton keeps Adams in suspense as Bruton condemns IRA killers
==============================================================

By Patricia Wilson in Washington and Richard Savill in Belfast
==============================================================

GERRY Adams, the Sinn Fein president, yesterday announced his intention
to go ahead with a visit to America next month as Washington considers
whether to renew his visa.

President Clinton and his inner circle of advisers have set aside a decision
on whether to renew Mr Adams's visa. He intends to attend St Patrick's Day
celebrations in New York and Washington.

As the White House scrambles to reassess its strategy after the London
Docklands bombing, a spokesman said that the question of the visa "has not
been confronted yet".

Mr Clinton, who strongly condemned the Docklands attack, has been urged
by Unionists to ban Mr Adams from entering America and to put an end to
Sinn Fein's highly organised and lucrative fund-raising there.

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, who returned from
Washington last week, said that Mr Clinton had agreed with him that the
IRA's resumption of terror was "damned stupid".

Mr Clinton must weigh the reaction of the British Government if his
administration receives Mr Adams against the political and diplomatic
fall-out if he bars the Sinn Fein president.

Britain's position, that it will have no ministerial contacts with Mr Adams
until the ceasefire is resumed, is seen by some of Mr Clinton's advisers as
too rigid and there is no sign yet of America distancing itself from him in
the same manner. Mr Adams is still regarded in Washington as the best
hope of restoring the ceasefire.

The Sinn Fein leader, who was first granted a visa by Mr Clinton in 1994,
must renew it every three months. While organisers of St Patrick's Day
celebrations have invited him, there is no suggestion yet of any plans for him
to meet US officials.

Asked about the status of Mr Adams's application, the White House said no
decision had been made. "Our focus right now is on getting the ceasefire
re-established and on trying to get the twin-track process back on track."

Interviewed on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost, Mr Adams said: "I have
been invited to go to the United States; my intentions are to go. I am sure
that if the President changes his mind he will tell me."

Mr Adams met John Hume, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and
Labour Party, on Saturday. He said: "It is not within my gift to get the IRA to
restore their cessation [of violence]. What I have to do - along with others -
is to create the conditions to persuade the IRA to do that."

Writing in the Washington Post, Mr Adams called on the British and Irish
Governments to set a date immediately for all-party talks without
pre-conditions.

He said: "Any new process must contain unambiguous public assurances
that all-party talks will be initiated by both governments at the earliest
possible date."

At a rally in Belfast yesterday, he told a 1,000-strong crowd that republicans
had many reasons to be angry but: "At this very dangerous and this very
risky phase of our struggle we offer the hand of friendship to John Major.
We say to John Major 'pull back from the abyss'.

John Bruton, the Irish prime minister, who is refusing to meet Sinn Fein
until the IRA ceasefire is restored, bluntly told the terrorists that their
campaign would not work.

He told Breakfast with Frost: "I presume the members of the IRA Army
Council are listening, and I say to them 'your way of killing people has only
divided people on the island of Ireland over the last 25 years. Your strategy
did not work for 25 years. Why should it work for another 25 years?'

"It is not a question of intimidating Britain into doing things, the problem is
getting agreement between the Unionists, or British, people who live in
Northern Ireland, and the Irish, or nationalists, who live in Ireland and
Northern Ireland.

"The problem has not really got anything to do with the position of the
British Government. The British Government can facilitate an agreement,
but it has to be made between two sets of Irish people.

"Violence in Canary Wharf, violence in Belfast has nothing to do with
making such an agreement."

Mr Bruton, who is hoping to meet Mr Major in the next fortnight, defended
his Government's plans for Bosnia-style "proximity talks" between all the
Northern Ireland political parties ahead of any elections.

Proximity talks had to come first because there were a lot of difficult
problems about elections to be sorted out, he stressed.

"If you had an election, is there any guarantee we would have serious
negotiations immediately after it, and that the elections won't be used as a
delaying tactic?"

He conceded that the problems in the way of a solution to the Northern
Ireland conflict had been worsened by the IRA ceasefire ending.

Dick Spring, deputy Irish prime minister, said he hoped to have talks soon
with Mr Trimble.

Mr Trimble has suggested a meeting on the same day as an Anglo-Irish
summit, but stipulated in a letter to Mr Spring that their exchanges should
be restricted to cross-border relations.

Mr Bruton met Robert McCartney, Independent Unionist MP for North
Down, on Saturday. Mr McCartney said he had told Mr Bruton: "The real
unity that can bring about peace is not a unity of Irish nationalism in its
various forms but a unity of those who believe in the democratic process."

Meanwhile, there is growing concern in security circles that the IRA will
restart violence in Northern Ireland, prompting retaliation by loyalists, who
are expected to meet this week to consider their response. Security forces in
the Irish Republic are concerned that they may strike in Dublin in reply to
the Docklands bomb.

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 19 February l996       Home News

Only desire for peace binds Ulster together
===========================================

By Anthony King
===============

THE survey in Belfast and its suburbs shows divisions
between the two communities that would be unthinkable on the British
mainland.

Surveys in England, Wales and Scotland tend to show a gentle shading off of
opinion from one part of the country to another and from one social class to
another.

In Northern Ireland, opinion on most issues is either a vivid orange or a
vivid green. Only a shared desire for peace seems to bind the Protestant and
Roman Catholic communities together.

Interviewers began by asking: If conditions are right, are you in favour of
holding all-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland? This was the only
question that produced near-unanimity on both sides of the divide with 99
per cent of Catholics and almost as many Protestants, 80 per cent, wanting
all-party talks to go ahead.

But there is a sharp disagreement about what constitutes "the right
conditions". Eighty-four per cent of Catholics believe that talks including
Sinn Fein should take place even if the IRA had not resumed its ceasefire.
Only 21 per cent of Protestants agree. Most of them, 71 per cent, oppose
Sinn Fein's participation in all-party talks in the absence of a renewed
ceasefire.

However, Protestant opinion is more divided on the question of the
decommissioning of arms. The interviewers asked: If the IRA does resume
its ceasefire, should all-party talks including Sinn Fein take place even if no
decommissioning of arms has taken place? 

However, the sectarian divide is as deep as ever on almost every other aspect
of future talks. Respondents were reminded that the British and Irish
governments have said they will not talk to Sinn Fein until it has
permanently renounced violence and asked: Do you support the two
governments in taking that line or not? Protestants do. Roman Catholics do
not.

They are equally divided on John Major's proposal for holding elections to
choose the parties' representatives to talks. More than three-quarters of
Protestants, 77 per cent, would welcome elections. More than four-fifths of
Catholics, 81 per cent, are opposed. The two communities are likewise
divided over the response to any continued IRA bombing campaign.

Interviewers asked: If the IRA lets off more bombs, should the authorities
reintroduce tough security measures such as internment? In response, the
two communities' views are an almost perfect mirror image of each other.
Against this background of sectarian division, the evident hostility to the
IRA in both communities emerges more starkly.

Asked if any more IRA prisoners should be released following the
Docklands bombing and the end of the IRA ceasefire, majorities in both
communities say "no". They are also less sharply divided over John Hume's
suggestion that a referendum should be held in the whole of Ireland asking
people whether they want to see an immediate renunciation of violence and
immediate all-party talks.

Roman Catholics are overwhelmingly in favour. A substantial minority of
Protestants agree. If such a referendum is held, it will pass easily as 78 per
cent say they would vote "yes" to both of Mr Hume's propositions. Only nine
per cent would say "no". Among Protestants, 68 per cent would support both
propositions. Only 14 per cent would vote against them, with the remainder
"don't knows".

Among Catholics, the majority would be still more lopsided: 95 per cent in
favour, with three per cent opposed and only two per cent "don't knows". As
the chart shows, Belfast voters remain divided along traditional sectarian
lines. The proportion saying they would support Sinn Fein, 13 per cent, is
slightly lower than the proportion of Belfast voters who backed Sinn Fein at
the 1992 general election, 16.1 per cent.

Ulster Marketing Surveys conducted 504 interviews on behalf of Gallup in
greater Belfast - the four Belfast constituencies plus suburbs - on Thursday
and Friday. Of those interviewed, 60 per cent were Protestants, 35 per cent
were Catholics and five per cent were of other faiths - a close approximation
to the actual proportions in the greater Belfast area.

o Anthony King is Professor of Government at Essex University.

Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

Just in case anyone hasn't received this...

                  I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M

                                        Date:     19-Feb-1996 04:10pm GMT
                                        From:     REO HELPDESK
                                                  REO_HELPDESK
                                        Dept:
                                        Tel No:

TO:  All ALL-IN-1 users on this node      ( SUBSCRIBERS: )

Subject: WORLDMESSAGE

         To:       All employees
         From:     Richard Jones, Country General Manager

         Subject:  The threat of terrorist bombs

         _____________________________________________________________

         You will all have heard of the IRA bomb attack in the
         Docklands area of London on Friday 9th February 1996.  I am
         sure that this has caused unease amongst Digital employees
         throughout the United Kingdom, and particularly those working
         in or visiting London.

         The aim of these attacks is to bring pressure on the UK
         government and to sway public opinion.  Though Digital is
         unlikely to be a specific target, innocent members of the
         public are often the casualties, so we all need to take more
         care.

         In Digital buildings we are generally protected by our access
         systems which allow only authorised people to enter, and PM&S
         employees are increasing their vigilance in all areas.

         You can help minimise the risk to yourselves and others still
         further by being particularly observant and reporting
         anything suspicious promptly - either to Digital security
         staff or to the police.

         As a matter of routine, when in a Digital building you should
         always:

         -  display your Digital badge
         -  ensure that visitors are always escorted
         -  challenge unescorted strangers who are not displaying a
            badge
         -  check meeting areas to ensure that nothing has been left
         -  keep your work space as tidy as possible so that alien
             objects will be noticed
         -  react promptly and positively to evacuation notifications

         Please take special care during this difficult period.

         Regards,
         Richard

Apparently the WLC (Winnersh Logistics Centre) have just 
spent 1.5 hours in the freezing cold because of a bomb alert.


Simon

 Chris,
   I wish the British government would begin deploying troops in London,
  to protect all of you.  It seems like a waste to send them to north east
  Ireland, when the front is in London.  Perhaps with vigilance on behalf
  of the public, more videocameras, troops in the streets, and checkpoints,
  London can be made safe again.

>           I am
>        sure that this has caused unease amongst Digital employees
>         throughout the United Kingdom, and particularly those working
>         in or visiting London. 

  I can imagine.  My little sister just cancelled her trip to visit
  relatives in London. This is absolutely tragic.  Here's hoping the
  best for you and all Digital employees in London. 

                          Mark

re:    Here's hoping the
  best for you and all Digital employees in London.

Why does this remind me of the pictures of Saddam Hussain
with the British child just before the Gulf War took off.

> Why does this remind me of the pictures of Saddam Hussain
> with the British child just before the Gulf War took off.

  I don't know, maybe it had something to do with all those
  Kuwaiti babies who were pulled out of their incubators by
  the evil satanic terrorist Iraqi soldiers.  Thank God we put
  the Kuwaiti Royal family back in their God given birthright 
  seat of power.


                       Mark

    >I wish the British government would begin deploying troops in
    London.....can be made safe again.
    ^^^^^^^
    
    Shouldn't that be Londonderry???
    
    
    CHARLEY

 >   >I wish the British government would begin deploying troops in
 >   London.....can be made safe again.
 >   ^^^^^^^
    
 >   Shouldn't that be Londonderry???

     Nah, I think you need the troops, where the bombs are going off.
 
                         Mark
    
    
 >   CHARLEY

    
    That note just about sums you up Mark.
    
    Still no answer to my racial steryotyping note then? How surprising,
    hypocrite.
    
    
    CHARLEY

    I think some concerted therapy is called for, and a lifetime on Prozac.
    
    Laurie.

    
        RTw  02/20 2049  U.S. considers banning Sinn Fein fundraising-paper
    
        LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuter) - The United States is considering banning
        fundraising in the country by Sinn Fein, the political wing of the
        guerrilla Irish Republican Army, the Financial Times reported on
        Wednesday.
    
        British officials told the newspaper that Friends of Sinn Fein, the
        movement's public fundraising organisation in the United States, had
        transferred more than $500,000 to banks in Ireland last year.
    
        The move comes after the IRA's decision to end its 17-month ceasefire
        on February 9 with a bomb in London's Docklands area which killed two
        people and injured 100 -- the first of three incidents in 10 days in
        the British capital.
    
        Friends of Sinn Fein may have transferred to Ireland the bulk of $1.12 
        million raised in America in the six months to October 31 last year,
        the paper said.
    
        President of the organisation Lawrence Downes said $528,137 was
        transferred to Ireland during that period, the report said. U.S.
        officials have no way of monitoring what the funds are used for once
        they leave the United States.
    
        The IRA ended its ceasefire in frustration over the lack of progress
        toward all-party political talks in Northern Ireland.
    
        Police said on Tuesday they had discovered large amounts of explosives
        and bomb-making equipment after overnight raids in the capital.
    
        The Clinton administration is delaying a decision on a U.S. visa
        request by Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein, a White House official
        said on Tuesday.
    
        Adams, whose previous visa has expired, is widely reported to want to
        visit the United States again to mark St. Patrick's Day, March 17.
    
        The official, who spoke on condition he not be named, said no visa
        decision had been made and he did not expect one in the near future.
    
        The Financial Times quoted U.S. officials as saying they may link a
        possible restoration of the ban on Sinn Fein fundraising with their
        decision on Adams' visa request.
    
        REUTER

    The Electronic Telegraph  Wednesday 21 February 1996  The Front Page
    
    IRA bomb cache seized by police
    
    by Colin Randall, George Jones and Richard Savill
    
        ANTI-TERRORIST officers investigating the IRA's resumed terrorist
        campaign seized explosives and bomb-making equipment in London
        yesterday.
    
        In the Irish Republic police raided the homes of several known
        republican sympathisers at Gorey, Co Wexford, the home town of the
        21-year-old IRA man blown up by his own bomb on a London bus on Sunday
        night.
    
        Quantities of Semtex explosive, with timers and wiring, were recovered
        in yesterday's operation in south-east London. There were no
        arrests,raising the possibility that other members of the IRA active 
        servicE unit escaped after the blast in Aldwych.
    
        Scotland Yard said that the bomb-making equipment and explosives were
        found at one of the raided homes.
    
        Cdr John Grieve, the head of the anti-terrorist branch, described the
        finds as "significant".
    
        Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, said the seizures represented an
        "encouraging development". He added: "The security forces will spare no
        effort in their attempt to do everything they can to prevent any
        further outrage."
    
        The raids followed three terrorist incidents in London since the
        ceasefire ended on Feb 9 with the bombing in Docklands that killed
        two people and injured 100.
    
        Detectives believe that the haul could be connected with the type of
        bomb that destroyed the bus and the device made safe after being found
        in a telephone kiosk in Charing Cross Road last Thursday.
    
        Two people detained in the Walworth area of south-east London on Monday
        were released without charge yesterday after being questioned at the
        high-security Paddington Green police station.
    
        John Major issued a warning yesterday that he was prepared to press
        ahead with negotiations on the future of Northern Ireland without Sinn
        Fein. But the Dublin government urged him to set a date for the start
        of all-party talks as an incentive for Sinn Fein and the IRA to call a
        halt to the killing.
    
        Mr Major, who spent 30 minutes on the telephone to John Bruton,
        the Irish prime minister, on Monday night, made clear that he was ready
        to freeze out Sinn Fein until there was a new ceasefire.
    
        A senior Whitehall source said: "There certainly has to be a return
        to the ceasefire - that is the most urgent thing. We intend to carry on
        and we don't intend to have a blockage in our attempts."
    
        Mr Bruton, while pressing for a date for all-party talks, made clear
        that Sinn Fein would be permitted to take part only when its IRA allies
        "stop the killing".
    
        He told the Irish parliament: "Killing people has no place in  politics.
        This democratic state cannot acknowledge the right of any organisation
        to wage war - as the IRA is doing.
    
        "I want to make it clear that the objective of the government is to
        get the IRA campaign stopped. If that happens, then there is no
        obstacle to the full participation of Sinn Fein in all-party talks."
    
        Mr Bruton appeared to adopt a softer line in his views on Mr Major's
        proposal for elections in Northern Ireland, although he repeated the
        reservations of nationalists.
    
        He said that if it was established that a limited elective process
        could provide the most straightforward route to a specific date for
        all party talks, then there was an onus on Dublin to explore that.
    
        At a meeting with Irish government officials on Monday night Sinn Fein
        representatives are understood to have pressed for a date for all-party
        talks to be set if there was to be a restoration of the IRA ceasefire.
    
        Mr Major, who met the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, at
        Downing Street, was said to be "keeping all options open", but still  
        in favour of the election strategy.
    
        Mr Trimble emerged from Number 10 declaring that both he and Mr Major
        agreed that elections still represented the best way forward.
    
        London and Dublin are still hopeful of finding enough common ground
        to arrange a summit before the end of the month. Sources suggested the
        early part of next week.
    
        Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, held talks in
        Belfast with the Ulster Democratic Party, which has links with loyalist
        paramilitaries.
    
        David Adams, a UDP spokesman, said that his party was doing all in its 
        power to ensure that loyalists did not suspend their ceasefire.
    
        The two most seriously injured casualties of the Aldwych bus blast were
        said to be showing signs of improvement yesterday.
    
        In St Thomas's hospital, London, Denise Hall, 30, a teachers'
        assistant, was able to visit her critically injured fiancee, Rolf
        Hobart, for the first time.
    
        The Torquay couple were caught in the blast while on a St Valentine's
        weekend in London.
    
        The IRA bomb exploded prematurely as the No 171 bus on which they were
        travelling back to the Waldorf hotel reached Aldwych after crossing
        Waterloo Bridge.
    
        Mr Hobart, 38, a plumber, suffered head and chest wounds. He remains on
        a respirator.
    
        Bob Newitt, the bus driver, was in a "serious but stable" condition
        at University College hospital. He has a chest injury but doctors expect
        him to make a complete recovery.
    
    
    

    RTw  02/21 1510  IRA says London bus bomb victim was guerrilla

    By Martin Cowley

    BELFAST, Feb 21 (Reuter) - The IRA announced on Wednesday that a
    21-year-old Irishman who was killed by a bomb on a London bus last
    Sunday was one of its guerrillas.

    It named him as Edward O'Brien of Gorey in County Wexford in the Irish
    Republic and said that he had been "on active service," adding to
    British investigators' suspicions that he had been transporting a
    device when it exploded prematurely.

    "It is with profound regret that we confirm that the man who died on
    Sunday was one of our volunteers," a caller using a recognised Irish
    Republican Army codeword told the Irish broadcasting network RTE.

    "To his family and to those injured in the bomb we extend our deepest
    sympathy."

    The statement gave no other details about how the blast occurred or the
    intended target.

    It was the third IRA bomb in the British capital since the IRA resumed
    its war against British rule in Northern Ireland 10 days ago, ending a
    17-month truce.

    Unlike the other two incidents, one of which killed two civilians in
    the Docklands financial district, no telephoned warnings were received
    before Sunday's blast.

    British and Irish police refused to confirm the dead man's identity
    throughout the day but news leaked out in his hometown after Irish
    police arrived at his parents' home and asked for a photograph they
    were thought to have sent to London police.

    His family condemned the bus explosion and ruled out any military-style
    funeral traditionally held for guerrillas killed on active service.

    Stunned by media reports that he had been carrying the bomb, they
    offered "deep sorrow and sympathy" in a statement issued through their
    lawyer in Gorey in the Irish Republic.

    They condemned the incident "unreservedly" and said they did not want
    their son to have a paramilitary-style funeral.

    Security experts said the absence of a guerrilla-style burial would
    help defuse any tension surrounding the burial in the small southeast
    Ireland town, until now untouched by 25 years of strife in Northern
    Ireland.

    Most families of IRA volunteers killed in the province allow masked
    guerrillas to flank the flag-draped coffin and to fire a volley over
    the grave. Such displays frequently lead to clashes with security
    forces.

    A Roman Catholic priest in the rural town hit out at the IRA's "evil"
    recruiting sergeants as his parishioners struggled to come to terms
    with their shock that years of war in Northern Ireland had come to
    their doors for the first time.

    "There is shock and sadness and horror," curate Father Walter Forde
    told Reuters in a telephone interview.

    "The feeling I get also is revulsion that the evil, depraved godfathers
    of the IRA can so easily recruit impressionable young people," Forde
    told Reuters by telephone.

    "If it is true -- as it seems to be -- you are talking about the IRA
    godfathers recruiting him in London, that's my guess."

    REUTER

        AP 25 Feb 96 21:57 EST V0275
    
        Copyright 1996 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.      
    
        Report: IRA Targeted Queen
    
        LONDON (AP) -- Soldiers with machine guns patrolled the grounds of
        Windsor Castle on Sunday, after police reportedly learned that Queen
        Elizabeth II is an IRA target.
    
        The Sun newspaper reported that maps and security plans of the castle
        and Buckingham Palace were found at the home of an IRA man killed last
        week when a bomb he was carrying on a London bus exploded. Nine other
        people were injured in the Feb. 18 incident.
    
        A hit list and coded attack warnings also were found under a floorboard
        at the southeast London apartment rented by Edward O'Brien, 21, the
        newspaper reported in its Monday editions. Also found were maps of
        Kensington Palace, home of Princess Diana, and of the queen's country
        homes -- Sandringham in eastern England and Balmoral in Scotland.
    
        The documents clearly identify the queen as a prime target and list
        Windsor Castle as a possible site from which to launch an attack on
        her, an unidentified security source told the paper.
    
        Security around the royals was immediately stepped up, the source told
        the paper. Besides posting armed soldiers on the royal properties,
        garbage cans were removed to eliminate potential hiding places for
        bombs, and parking nearby was banned to deter car bombers.
    
        Police refused to comment on tabloid's report.
    
        The queen spent Sunday at Windsor Castle, 20 miles west of London,
    asoldiers patrolled the grounds with machine guns.
    
        The IRA has not directly targeted the royal family since Lord
        Mountbatten, the queen's cousin, was killed in the Irish Republic in
        1979.
    
        On Saturday, following the discovery of bomb-making equipment at
        O'Brien's home, Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist chief raised the
        possibility of additional IRA attacks.
    
        "Following the discovery of significant quantities of bomb-making
        material and detailed documentation ... we are warning of the
        possibility of imminent attacks by the provisional IRA on the
        mainland," Commander John Grieve said.
    
        The IRA ended its 17-month truce by bombing London's Docklands business
        area on Feb. 9, killing two people.

     RTw  02/25 1937  More British troops return to Northern Ireland
    
        LONDON, Feb 26 (Reuter) - Around 400 British troops will return to
        Northern Ireland from Germany as a safety measure following the end
        of the IRA ceasefire, an army spokesman in Belfast said on Monday.
    
        The Royal Dragoon Guards are the second of three major units which left
        the province after the ceasefire was declared in August 1994 to return
        to Ulster.
    
        "This is a further precautionary measure to ensure that the armed
        forces are able to provide support to the RUC (Royal Ullster
        Constabulary), should the situation require it," the army said in a
        statement.
    
        Together with around 500 soldiers who returned earlier this month, the
        returning Royal Dragoon Guards will bring the total strength of British
        troops in Northern Ireland to around 17,400.
    
        That is about 600 or 700 less than it was before the ceasefire, the
        spokesman said by telephone from Belfast. The last of the three major
        units to leave after the ceasefire remains on notice to return if
        required.
    
        Two Irish Republican Army bombs have exploded in London since the
        guerrilla group said on February 9 it was calling off its 17-month
        ceasefire.
    
        Britain has agreed to hold talks on Monday with IRA's political arm
        Sinn Fein, the first since the end of the ceasefire.
    
        REUTER

        RTw  02/25 1343  Sinn Fein backers sue London newspaper for libel
    
        DUBLIN, Feb 25 (Reuter) - Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, said on
        Sunday its U.S. supporters were suing London's Financial Times for
        libel in an article over the group's U.S. funding.
    
        It said in a statement that Lawrence Downes, a New York Attorney and
        President of Friends of Sinn Fein Inc., the U.S. fund-raising group
        for Sinn Fein, had engaged a London solicitor to purse the case.
    
        It said that the Financial Times had conspired with the British
        government to falsely accuse Friends of Sinn Fein of funding the Irish
        Republican Army's London bombings.
    
        The IRA, which seeks to end British rule of Northern Ireland, broke
        a 17-month ceasefire and killed three people, including a bomber blown 
        up by his own device, in a campaign in the British capital which resumed
        on February 9.
    
        Sinn Fein said the Financial Times had maliciously libelled Downes in a
        February 21 editorial which said that the bulk of Friends of Sinn
        Fein's $1.2 million had been "hurriedly transferred after the first
        IRA bombing."
    
        The London newspaper also wrote that the funds were now "under the
        control of the organisation's military commanders, available to finance
        more acts of terrorism."
    
        Sinn Fein said Downes had had told the Financial Times that no such
        transfers had occurred. It said the newspaper quoted "a high level
        official in the British government" as the source of its report.
    
        REUTER

        RTw  02/27 1943  Tourists defy IRA bombs to enjoy London       
    
        By Carrie Levine
    
        LONDON, Feb 28 (Reuter) - Bomb attacks that have claimed three lives
        since the IRA called an abrupt halt to its 17-month ceasefire earlier
        this month have not discouraged tourists from visiting the British
        capital.
    
        London's tourist sites are as busy as ever and airlines have not seen a
        significant rise in cancellations.
    
        In the lengthy queue for the Tower of London, American graduate
        students Kara Bucci and Margot Dekorte said they had planned their trip
        after the bombings drove down airfares.
    
        "It would be really stupid to bomb Americans when they're counting
    so much on American support," Bucci said. "Bombing me would be worse for
        them than for me."
    
        Dekorte agreed, although she said she had been a little shaken by the
        sight of camouflaged guards around Buckingham Palace the day before.
    
        "There were men with guns around Buckingham Palace," she said
        disbelievingly.
    
        Police patrolling outside Buckingham Palace during the Changing of the
        Guard ceremony said the crowd gathered outside the gate was about
        normal for off-season.
    
        "We decided to come on January 1, before anything happened," said Mack
        Huckaby, an American tourist from Alabama, as he hoisted his
        six-year-old son Tyler onto his shoulders for a better view.
    
        "We have relatives living over here, and they said don't worry. They
        said us getting hit by a bomb is about as likely as us winning the
        lottery," added Huckaby's mother-in-law Myrla Durden.
    
        Jon Lee, who lives in London's West End and works for the China
        National Tourist Office, said he did not think Chinese tourists were
        avoiding London because of the bombings.
    
        He told his relatives visiting from China not to worry, although he
        said their concern was more for him and his wife than for themselves.
    
        "When they were in China they heard it on the news before we did. They
        called us, then we heard it on television," he said.
    
        American Airlines spokeswoman Lizann Peppard said there had been no
        more than the usual number of cancellations since the IRA resumed its
        bombing campaign.
    
        Harrod's, one of the world's most famous department stores, was still
        attracting tourists.
    
        Daniel Doane from Canada planned his trip two weeks ago -- about when
        the ceasefire ended. He said the bombings had not deterred him at all.
    
        His friend, Leslie Jen from Vancouver, said they had joked about going
        to Harrod's, the site of an IRA bombing in 1983.
    
        "We joked about it," she said. "It's like the lightning strikes twice
        thing -- you should go to the places where it's already happened."
    
        REUTER
    

        RTw  03/06 1728  Britain taking seriously IRA warning of more war
    
        By Andrew Hill BELFAST, March 6 (Reuter) - The Irish Republican Army
        told Britain on Wednesday it was ready for another quarter century of
        war unless the London and Dublin governments came up with a new deal
        for peace in Northern Ireland.
    
        Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, he told
        reporters in Dublin: "I take that very seriously as every person must
        in these islands.
    
        "Any suggestion that people are prepared to turn their backs on
        democracy and return to violence is a gravely serious matter and one
        which will strike terror into the hearts of people in Northern Ireland
        in particular," Mayhew said.
    
        The IRA message was spelled out in an article by Gerry Adams, head of
        the group's political wing Sinn Fein.
    
        He wrote after meeting the IRA Army Council to review a peace process
        which looked hopeful last year but failed to bring the anti-British
        guerrilla movement into political negotiations and suffered a dramatic
        setback last month with a series of bomb attacks in London.
    
        The IRA message did not rule out a renewal of an Irish Republican Army
        ceasefire broken on February 9, but suggested a hardening of its
        attitudes towards British attempts to disband the guerrillas by making
        them surrender their weapons.
    
        The Adams article and an earlier IRA statement warning its Pro-British
        Loyalist foes not to retaliate for the London bombings were seen by
        Irish officials as signs that the IRA is still considering whether to
        renew the truce or the war.Despite three hardline statements, there
        have been no fresh IRA bombings in London or elsewhere since February 
        18, a further sign that the IRA leadership is still making up its mind.
    
        The article was made public as Britain and Ireland held preparatory
        talks with other Northern Ireland parties in the run-up to full-scale
        peace talks set for June 10, from which Sinn Fein will be excluded
        unless the IRA ceasefire is restored.
    
        Adams quoted a senior member of the IRA, which exists to end British
        rule of Northern Ireland, as saying:"We sued for peace, the British
        wanted war. If that's what they want we will give them another 25 years
        of war."
    
        He said the IRA leadership was prepared to renew its ceasefire, the
        key demand of Britain and Ireland for Sinn Fein's inclusion in the peace
        process,  but only if Britain came up with a "viable" new peace plan.
    
        This was not spelled out in full but Adams said "a new deal is
        required" that would drop all preconditions.
    
        Before Adams and John Hume of the Catholic nationalist SDLP party met
        the the IRA, the British and Irish governments had said the only
        precondition to Sinn Fein's involvement in the peace process and
        all-party talks was a new IRA ceasefire.
    
        British Prime Minister John Major said on return from a Far East tour
        that the IRA bombing campaign had not dented his determination to
        pursue the Anglo-Irish plan.
    
        "We have not been pushed off our proposals by the bombs. I am
        preparedto take risks to try and reach a satisfactory settlement," he
        said.
    
        The unnamed IRA guerrilla leader appeared to reject British insistence
        that the IRA disarm in stages while all-party talks go ahead -- a
        compromise proposal put forward by the United States to break months of
        deadlock in the peace process.
    
        "There will be no surrender of IRA weapons under any circumstances and
        to anyone. Disarmament of all the armed groups is only viable as part
        of a negotiated settlement and nobody knows that better than the
        British," he was quoted as saying.
    
        By ruling out so-called parallel decommissioning, the IRA appeared to
        be digging in and giving Sinn Fein a tough negotiating mandate.
    
        "The Brits should know by now that we are serious. When we say we
        want to make peace they shouldn't mess," Adams quoted the IRA member as
        saying.
    
        Sinn Fein says the disarming of the IRA can only be negotiated as part
        of a final overall settlement that will include withdrawal of British
        troops and the disbanding of the Protestant-dominated Royal Ulster
        Constabulary police.
    
        At present Sinn Fein can only negotiate with British and Irish
        officials below minister level because of a ban by Dublin and London on
        ministerial talks pending a new IRA ceasefire.
    
        Adams's article was published as Britain and Ireland held preparatory
        discussions with other Northern Ireland political parties about
        all-party talks and elections in the province designed to choose
        delegates to the talks.
    
        Mayhew said he was optimistic about the negotiations which are due to
        end next week and confident that all-party talks will go ahead on June
        10.
    
        REUTER

Doors close on Adams US visit 

By Mark Simpson 

GERRY Adams has got used to the red-carpet treatment in America, but next week
he will experience the cold-shoulder. 

Many of the doors previously open to him will be closed. 

What's more, there is the possibility that while the Sinn Fein president is 
confined to the fringes for the St Patrick's Day celebrations, Ulster Unionist
leader David Trimble will be rubbing shoulders with the White House elite. 

A year ago, it was all very different. Mr Adams was President Clinton's guest 
at the White House St Patrick's Day party, and so relaxed was the atmosphere 
that he joined in an impromptu sing-song with SDLP leader John Hume. 
But the IRA's resumption of violence has changed all that. This time last week
it wasn't even clear whether Mr Adams would be allowed back in America. 

His visa was eventually granted _ but it came with preconditions. No 
fundraising was permitted, and the White House made it clear that its 
open-door policy was no longer in operation. 

Yet it was only 37 days ago that Mr Adams visited the White House and 
President Bill Clinton made a point of meeting him. 

Stormont Minister Michael Ancram was not accorded such treatment during a 
similar visit. During his Northern Ireland trip in November, President Clinton 
made an unscheduled stop in west Belfast and met the Sinn Fein
leader at a cafe on the Falls Road. 

Now, the chances of Mr Adams seeing the president again hinge on another 
IRA ceasefire. In Washington next week, there is no invitation to the 
White House ball. Taoiseach John Bruton will be there. The guest-list is also
believed to include Mr Hume and Mr Trimble. 

There were reports today that Senator Edward Kennedy, who has met Mr Adams on 
almost all his previous US visits, is no longer willing to meet him. 

But Senator Chris Dodd is apparently willing to continue face-to-face contact 
and Sinn Fein has managed to set up a series of engagements for the Adams 
visit. Mr Adams leaves for the US on Tuesday and is expected to visit
New York, Washington and Pennsylvania before returning to Belfast next week. 

Belfast Telegraph Online 
Friday, 8 March, 1996

`Save the peace' plea to IRA 

Cardinal warns of isolation 

By Robin Morton 

REPUBLICANS will find themselves isolated in a political wilderness if the
IRA resumes its campaign of violence, Cardinal Cahal Daly has warned. 

Addressing the annual dinner of the Ulster Society of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants at Cultra last night, the Roman Catholic Primate appealed to the
IRA to "save the peace". "To speak of 25 more years of violence is
something which strikes a cold dread and revulsion throughout the
community," he said. "I would earnestly appeal to the IRA to think again
before it plunges this community into the deep dark pit of violence." 

The Cardinal warned that if the IRA campaign resumed, republicans would
end up talking only to themselves. "If the IRA was to resort to full scale bombs
and guns it would be bombing itself out of the united nationalist community
north and south of the border, a community which is firmly against violence
and committed to a determination to pursue the democratic process." 

Cardinal Daly said that no political settlement could be achieved without the
agreement of unionists, and said sooner or later republicans would have to
come to terms with unionism. "Violence only makes unionists more
determinedly unionist, and only hardens political attitudes," he said.
"Republicans need the support of the SDLP, the Irish government, and the
Friends of Ireland in the United States but this support they will lose if 
there is a return to violence." 

The Cardinal said unionists were wrong to think that the so-called
pan-nationalist front was by definition anti- unionist. 

If they examined the situation more closely, they would see that the
pan-nationalist front could offer unionists several benefits. 

These included co- operation with the government in pursuit of an agreed
settlement, rejection of violence, and acceptance of the principle of an
agreement based on consent. The Cardinal said those unionists who
described the Republic as a foreign state should realise that a large minority
in Northern Ireland disagreed. 

                                                              
Belfast Telegraph Online 
Friday, 8 March, 1996

COLD SHOULDER: Washington says no to IRA violence THE St Patrick's
Day celebrations come at a critical time in the peace process, letting Sinn
Fein and the IRA see just how much sympathy they have lost around the world
since last year. Then they were the flavour of the month in the US, for the part
they had played in establishing peace; next week, Gerry Adams will reap the
whirlwind for letting down his erstwhile friends. 

Official doors will be closed to him and, even more significant, there will be 
no handshake from President Clinton, even in election year. Washington has the
coldest of shoulders for politicians who promise but cannot deliver and the
suspension of the IRA ceasefire has caused Adams's stock to drop
disastrously. As the hardline rhetoric of the latest IRA statements sinks in,
Americans will question whether there is a peace process still to rescue. 

Those who have genuinely wanted to help the Irish, north and south, have a
simple reaction to recent events. They were frustrated by the British
government's delaying tactics, but were nevertheless appalled by the Canary
Wharf bombing. They wanted action _ and they got it, in the form of the
Downing Street communique, meeting nationalist demands for a fixed date
for all-party talks, regardless. Instead of a renewed ceasefire, however, and a
commitment to the basic principles laid down by the Mitchell Commission, the
IRA's reaction has been one of unremitting hostility and threat. 

Slowly but surely, the advocates of fair play in Northern Ireland are wakening
up to the full significance of the republican agenda. It is not, as the
propagandists have portrayed it, about justice and democracy, but about
asserting the demands of a small minority over those of the vast majority.
While people march and demonstrate for peace, the IRA prides itself in
rejecting every move to advance a democratic solution. 

One sentence, from the Republican News interview with one of the seven IRA
leaders who met John Hume and Gerry Adams last week says it all:
"Attempts to impose as preconditions the Mitchell report recommendations,
attempts to impose decommissioning, attempts to impose acceptance of the
so- called principle of majority consent or unionist veto, attempts to impose
this, that or the other principle as preconditions are a nonsense." 

If that is the definitive IRA stance, and is not negotiable, there would be
nothing for Sinn Fein to talk about, if it did get inside the doors of the
Stormont conference centre. Its hands would be tied _ and there would be no
democratic politicians to deal with. 

Even the most diehard republicans must know this, so the situation may
change, as influence is brought to bear not only from Irish America but from
within the movement itself. Sinn Fein would be throwing away years of careful
diplomacy, if it were to adopt this not- an-inch approach, and there must be a
lively debate going on in republican circles. The hard men can lay down the
law, but no self-respecting politician will obey without a struggle. 

Meanwhile David Trimble will discover a new openness to unionist concerns if
he takes the St Patrick's Day trail to Washington. Having compared the
London bombings to the actions of their own home-grown fanatics, American
politicians have a greater awareness of his problems and those of the British
and Irish governments. They know the difficulty of dealing with opponents,
anywhere in the world, who reserve the right to use terrorism in a political
cause. 

The first week of the "intensive discussions" has not been an unqualified
success, but it has broken the ice in many ways. Parties have been prepared
to cross boundaries, and even revise their positions, to hear what others think
_ chiefly about the form of elections, but touching on other concerns. The Irish
government presence has been confined and low-key, and has not been the
insurmountable obstacle it might have been. Eventually the government may
have to take the election decision itself, but the consultation process has
been honoured. Now it is up to Sinn Fein, if it can break free of its IRA
associations, to decide whether it is part of the democratic process or not. 
                                                              
Belfast Telegraph Online 
Friday, 8 March, 1996

Girl left in field with broken arms after
beating by gang with hurleys 


By Gerry Moriarty,in Belfast 

A SENIOR RUC officer has described an assault on 17-year-old
Belfast girl, Ms Kerry Deeds, as one of the most savage he had
come across. The girl was beaten so fiercely by men wielding
hurleys that her arms were broken.

Insp Roy Eland said had it not been for residents and a passing
motorist who heard her screaming with pain and shock in a field
where she had been abandoned the consequences might have
been far worse.

Police were alerted by the residents and the motorist around 3
a.m. on Saturday. They found the teenager lying in a field at
Woodlands Grange in west Belfast. In addition to her broken
arms, she was cut and bruised.

In another attack, a 25-year-old had his ankle broken by a man
with a hammer after 10 masked men, who claimed to be from the
IRA, broke into his home at West Rock Crescent in west Belfast
shortly before 10 a.m. yesterday.

Dr Philip McGarry, an Alliance Party councillor, accusing
``republican vigilantes'' of being responsible for the two assaults,
and challenged Sinn F�in to state its position on such beatings.

``Sinn F�in's silence on these vicious beatings speaks far more
eloquently of their stance on peace and justice than any number of
carefully worded speeches and press statement, which can only
be seen as patently dishonest,'' he added.


The Irish Times

11 March, 1996

    RTw  03/13 0007  Adams blames British for end of ceasefire
    
    By Mark Egan
    
    NEW YORK, March 12 (Reuter) - Irish Republican political leader Gerry
    Adams spoke to a peace rally in New York on Tuesday and blamed the
    British government for the stalemate in the Northern Ireland peace
    process.
    
    Speaking to a jubilant crowd of about 1,000 people at Gaelic Park in
    the Bronx, Adams praised President Bill Clinton for his efforts and
    called for Irish Prime Minister John Bruton to stand up for a united
    Ireland.
    
    "Some of us would say, rightly and justifiably, that this British
    government does not want peace," Adams said.
    
     Calling for an end to all pre-conditions to all party talks he said he
     wanted to revive the peace process and blamed the current impasse on
     the British government.
    
     "The British government is stubborn, the British government is
     intransigent, the British government is downright stupid and the
     British government thinks the Irish poeple are second-class citizens
     and can be treated in some way as subhuman and you need to tell that
     that this is not the case," Adams said.
    
     Adams called on Bruton to look beyond the party politics of his
     coalition government and stand up to the British government.
    
     "He needs to stand up for the Irish nation and understand that the
     Irish nation extends beyond the state that he governs and he needs to
     stand up to the British and tell them that the Irish people want to
     meet them halfway to bring about peace," he said.
    
     Adams said Clinton's efforts have done more for the Irish cause
     than any other U.S. president.
    
     "This president has refused to take bad advice from London for a long
     time," he said. Adams is in the U.S. for a six-day visit to meet 
     Irish-American groups in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington.
    
     He arrived in New York within hours of pro-British guerrillas warning
     the Irish Republican Army that it was ready to retaliate if the IRA
     continued its violent campaign.
    
     "I think that everyone in Ireland should remain calm," Adams said in
     his first reaction at New York's Kennedy international airport. "The
     loyalists have their own very negative agenda and sometimes they have
     been used by the British government."
    
     The Combined Loyalist Military Command, the umbrella group for
     Protestant guerrillas who have operated a truce since October 1994,
     said in a statement to the BBC in Belfast that they were prepared to
     match the IRA "blow for blow." But there was no explicit threat to
     end their ceasefire.
    
     The IRA, citing frustration over refusal of a seat in peace talks,
     resumed armed hostilities after an 18-month lull in February with four
     bombs in London that killed two bystanders and a guerrilla carrying
     one of the bombs.
    
     Adams, treated like a hero in the United States during his last visit
     one year ago, was isolated by British, Irish and U.S. leaders after the
     resumption of the bombing campaign.
    
     REUTER
    

    Has anybody got any details about that 8 year old girl who was shot
    dead by the I.N.L.A.?
    
    From what I can remember from Saturday morning (hungover) the I.N.L.A.
    just opened fire through someone's front window and the girl was
    killed. 
    
    
    CHARLEY$not_sure_of_details

    CHARLEY,
    
    She was killed by a single bullet which struck her in the head
    as she was kneeling on the floor doing a jigsaw puzzle.
    
    John
    

    Charming.....
    
    What a supreme act of bravodo by the gunmen/man, I hope they are really
    �$%&^*! proud of themselves. Wankers.
    
    
    CHARLEY

I would imagine the scumm will come out with something like;

	She was just an innocent bystander, they were after the father.
	The INLA have offered the sincere appologies.

Or some other vile staitment

Does the INLA have any connections with the PIRA/Sinn Fein? Do they have 
any 'political minders' like Sinn Fein does for the PIRA?

Simon

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 18 March 1996  Home News

                          

INLA linked to murder of Belfast girl
=====================================

By Richard Savill, Irish Correspondent
======================================

    DETECTIVES in Belfast questioned several men yesterday about the murder
    of a nine-year-old girl amid suggestions that the killing was part of
    another internal feud within the Irish National Liberation Army, the
    extreme republican terror group. The men were later released.

    Barbara McAlorum was shot dead on Friday by gunmen who fired
    indiscriminately through a window of her north Belfast home, also
    critically wounding a family friend, Ciaran Scott, 19.

    No organisation has admitted carrying out the attack and police were
    unable to confirm the INLA link.

    A caller to the Irish News in Belfast, using a coded message, blamed
    associates of  the INLA's former chief-of-staff, Gino Gallagher, who
    was shot dead in January.

    His killing led to suggestions of a power struggle within the
    organisation.

    Kevin McAlorum, the dead girl's father, denounced his daughter's
    killers and said that he did not know why the house was attacked. "I
    heard it was the INLA," he said. "If it was I am totally mystified. I
    have never had any dealings with that organisation."

    Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

The Electronic Telegraph  Monday 18 March 1996  Home News

                          

We know Docklands bomber, say police
====================================

by Tim Reid
===========

This report appeared in the last edition of The Sunday Telegraph

    A MASTER bomb-maker who made the devices which devastated London's
    Docklands last month and the City of London three years ago has been
    identified by anti-terrorist officers.

    Work carried out on both vehicles bears the hallmarks of a known IRA
    lorry bombmaker that City of London police and anti-terrorist officers
    have long suspected of being behind the 1993 Bishopsgate blast.

    Officers investigating the Bishopsgate bomb, which killed a newspaper
    photographer and caused more than �1 billion of damage, say
    similarities with the blast that brought the IRA ceasefire to an end
    last month are "striking".

    The suspect, a specialist in assembling lorry bombs, is believed to
    operate from the border region of Northern Ireland. But both attacks
    were so well planned and executed that officers say there is little
    concrete evidence to link him to either explosion.

    The stolen lorries that contained both home-made bombs had undergone
    extensive alterations with "specialist equipment" to hide the devices.
    It is this work, in particular, that has led police to believe they are
    investigating the handywork of the same man.

    Detectives will not say, however, whether the bombs themselves were
    fitted into the vehicles at the time of the alterations or loaded on at
    a later date.

    On Tuesday the RUC announced that IRA terrorists had been fitting out
    the lorry used in last month's Docklands bomb during President
    Clinton's historic visit to Northern Ireland in November.

"We know that to do this took a considerable period of time"
------------------------------------------------------------

    Detective Inspector Alan Mains said the lorry, a flat-backed
    transporter, was altered by terrorists "working in the border areas" as
    Mr Clinton toured Belfast. Two men working in a newsagent's kiosk died
    and 40 people were treated in hospital when the bomb exploded at South
    Quay station at about 7pm on February 9.

    The work, which included fitting a false bottom to hide the estimated
    1,000lb of explosives - a mixture of semtex and fertiliser - and
    reinforcing the chassis, was carried out using several different parts
    of other vehicles.

    "We know the vehicle was in the border area for a considerable time
    between November 1995 and January," Mr Mains said. "We know that to do
    this [work] took a considerable period of time."

    Commander John Grieve, head of the anti-terrorist branch, is travelling
    to Northern Ireland next week as part of the investigation into the
    Docklands blast.

    The low-loader was spotted on two occasions being shipped on a ferry
    from Belfast to Stranraer in Scotland, the first on an apparent "dummy
    run" in mid-January and then two days before the attack.

    But it is the movements of the vehicle in the border region of Northern
    Ireland which police in London and Ulster are now trying to pinpoint.

    Hopes of identifying the men who parked the blue lorry under South Quay
    station are fading, however. Video footage that shows two men getting
    out of the vehicle an hour before the explosion and captured on a
    traffic camera, is so poor as to render an identification "virtually
    impossible", an anti-terrorist officer said last week.

    Electronic Telegraph is a Registered Service Mark of The Telegraph plc 

    So are they saying that the docklands bombing was planned as far back
    as November???
    
    
    CHARLEY

Probably even earlier than that. The ceasefire did not stop IRA reconnaissance
operations. One might ask why such operations were needed after a 'permanent
cessation of violence'.

Dave

    .100
    
    Correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the impression that the
    I.N.L.A. used to have links with Sinn Fein but have now effectively
    distanced themsleves from Gerry Adams.
    
    
    CHARLEY

      RTw  04/16 0706  IRA London bomber was ``author of own misfortune''
    
        LONDON, April 16 (Reuter) - An Irish Republican Army bomber who blew
        himself up on a London bus in February was the "author of his own
        misfortune," an inquest found on Tuesday.
    
        British coroner Paul Knapman recorded a verdict of accidental death
        on Irishman Edward O'Brien.
    
        O'Brien, 21, from County Wexford in Ireland, died when a bomb he was
        carrying on a bus in central London's Aldwych area exploded on February
        18. Four people were injured in the blast which tore open the red
        double-decker bus.
    
        Pathologist Dr Iain West said said O"Brien's legs were blown off by
        the explosion and his lungs were ripped to tatters.
    
        The explosion took place nine days after IRA guerrillas ended a
        17-month ceasefire by setting off a massive bomb in the Canary Wharf
        district of east London.
    
        The IRA wants to end British rule of Northern Ireland and seeks the
        eventual unification of the island of Ireland.
    
        Police told the inquest that O'Brien had been preparing an IRA bombing
        campaign in Britain while the republican organisation's ceasefire was
        still in force.
    
        Detective Superintendent William Emerton said O'Brien was drawing up
        lists of potential targets during President Bill Clinton's visit to
        Britain and Ireland last November.
    
        REUTER
    
    

        RTw  04/25 0808  Failed London bomb may be Britains largest-police
    
        LONDON, April 25 (Reuter) - The suspected Irish Republican Army bomb
        under a London bridge on Wednesday night contained probably the largest
        amount of high explosive planted on the British mainland, police said
        on Thursday.
        
        A police spokesman said of the two small explosions: "The devices are
        believed to have contained upwards of 30 pounds (14 kilos) of high
        explosive.
        
        "This is probably the largest amount of high explosives ever to have
        been placed on the mainland. This highlights the need for the public to
        remain vigilant and to continue to report their suspicions to police,"
        the spokesman said.
        
        No one was hurt when the detonators went off but failed to ignite the
        explosive, hidden in boxes under the bridge.
    
        REUTER
    
    
                                                                        

    Virgin Radio, (who take their news reports from Sky News), reported this
    morning that the IRA are very near to re-instating the cease-fire,
    apparently as a result of the comments made by Mr Major in his
    interview in yesterday's Irish Times. Have I missed something here?...
    Yesterday Gerry Adams stated that what Major offered was `still not
    enough' and Ian Paisley was accusing John Major of `treachery'....
    
    I hope that it is true and that the media aren't just inventing news....
    
    Ray....          

    Ray,
    
    They are still humming and haaing I think. I heard Adams on the radio
    yesterday and his line was basically, we don't trust Major. Today I
    heard Adams is thinking about writing Major a letter. 
    
    My guess: there will be some diplomatic shuffle dancing and then IRA
    will make some sort of declaration and there will be a lot of unionist
    huffing and puffing about whether it is real or not. 
    
    I also heard Trimble on the radio and he seems to be moderating a
    little. Also some Protestants in East Belfast have been campaigning
    against UVF wall paintings and also against the marching on the Ormeau
    Road so it seems that the politicians may not be able to continue with
    their ritual numbers as the people demand peace. The nutcases CAN be
    defeated politically...
                          
    Kevin

>>  The nutcases CAN be defeated politically...
    
    Amen to that....
    
    Ray....

    I heard Paisley on R4 on my way to work this morning; he's the same as
    ever, and has re-affirmed his position that he'll never share a table
    with Sinn Fein. The nutters will take a fair bit of defeating, it
    seems.
    
    Cheers, Laurie.