The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, will today challenge the British government to adjudicate on the state of the IRA ceasefire after an alleged IRA abduction of a republican dissident was foiled by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in Belfast on Friday night.
The incident has the potential to destabilise the efforts to restore devolution, and could jeopardise what is perceived as a tentative willingness by the DUP to share power with Sinn Féin.
It comes as the British and Irish governments try to fashion an end to the political logjam, and will be raised today when Sinn Féin and DUP delegations meet the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, in the current review of the Belfast Agreement.
Condemning the Belfast abduction, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, accused Sinn Féin of "vomit-making hypocrisy" by pushing for political concessions while the IRA "pretends" to be on ceasefire.
"They are trying to have it both ways; having a private army, having a private police force. The IRA is trying to pretend it is on military ceasefire. It is a police state within a police state."
Mr Bobby Tohill, a former IRA and former INLA member who is now viewed as a supporter of the "Real IRA", was rescued after uniformed police rammed a van in Belfast city centre on Friday night thwarting the attempted abduction. He said he believed his abductors were going to kill him. Four men are to appear in court today in connection with the abduction attempt.
The chief constable of the PSNI, Mr Hugh Orde, said he was in no doubt the Provisional IRA was behind the abduction. The IRA continued to carry out "punishment" shootings and beatings, he said.
Dr Paisley said he would challenge Mr Murphy to declare whether the IRA ceasefire remained intact. "It is clear the IRA remains a fully armed and active terror machine that has no intention of leaving its violent, murderous and criminal activities behind."
However, the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, said his party would not be made a "whipping boy" over the incident, and that there had been "an unholy haste by a range of politicians eager to seize upon Hugh Orde's statement, and an eagerness by sections of the media to repeat his allegation without question, or to embroider it. All of those involved need to catch themselves on."
Mr Alex Attwood, of the SDLP, said the incident emphasised the truth behind the Taoiseach's comments last week that "there can be no half-way house between violence and democracy. The republican movement have travelled far in recent years, but they have clearly not travelled all the way."
Using some of the strongest language against Sinn Féin by any Minister recently, Mr McDowell said the kidnapping could not be under-estimated. "It is a very serious incident, but it isn't isolated. Sinn Féin and the IRA have been effectively ruling large areas of Northern Ireland on the basis of punishment beatings, which are, in fact, mutilations, and torture," he told Today FM's Sunday Supplement.
Sinn Féin and the IRA had made "insatiable" demands. "They are brass-necked enough to talk about human rights in public but at the same time they engage in this stomach-churning hypocrisy where people they are associated with can go and break people's legs."
Stressing the attack on Mr Tohill was designed to kill, Mr McDowell said: "The perpetrators wore boiler suits. You don't have to be an Einstein to know that a very serious crime was in contemplation."
