The INLA has said it suspects the British and Irish governments are deliberately holding up the search for the body of a man it murdered and secretly buried in France 14 years ago.
The claims have been strongly denied by the Government. An INLA spokesman told The Irish Times it had given details to the Government seven months ago of the location of Mr Seamus Ruddy's body.
He said the INLA provided further information three months ago and could not understand why the secret grave had not been located. "We believe the French authorities are sitting on this matter on the advice of the two governments.
"We have information from reliable sources suggesting it is to the advantage of the British and Irish governments and the pro-agreement parties that the bodies of the Provisional IRA disappeared are found first.
"Their discovery could be used as a confidence-building measure and a means of strengthening the Good Friday agreement. The body of Seamus Ruddy is being used as a political pawn."
The IRA has admitted abducting, killing and secretly burying nine people but is refusing to disclose the location of the bodies until amnesty laws are passed.
Mr Ruddy, an INLA member from Newry, Co Down, was working as an English teacher in France when he was killed in an internal INLA dispute. He was secretly buried in an arms dump in woodland at Rouen, near Paris. His body was later moved to another arms dump in the same wood.
One of his killers, John O'Reilly, was shot dead in an INLA feud two years later. The other died of a heart attack last year.
The INLA declared a ceasefire last August. The paramilitary group then passed on details of the location of Mr Ruddy's remains to its political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
An INLA inmate in Portlaoise prison who had not been involved in the killing, but knew the location of the Rouen arms dump, pinpointed the hidden grave.
An IRSP delegation, along with four members of the Ruddy family, met a senior Government official, whose name is known to The Irish Times, at the Killiney Hotel in Dalkey, Co Dublin, on September 21st.
They handed him a French ordinance survey map showing the grave's location. Three months later a Government official requested more information. The IRSP handed a video-tape of the woodland, with the grave marked with an X, to a Department of Justice official on January 17th.
A Government spokesman last night confirmed these meetings but attributed the delay in searching for Mr Ruddy's body to complicated French legal procedures.
"There is no truth whatsoever in the suggestion that the Irish Government is delaying this for political reasons. We doubt the British would do so either. Both governments have been striving to end the Ruddy family's agony and been motivated only by humanitarian concerns," he said.
An IRSP representative, Mr Willie Gallagher, rejected this explanation and said he was very frustrated by the delay. "We feel like going to Paris ourselves with shovels to exhume the body. We are in regular contact with the Ruddys, and the delay is very upsetting for them."