A NEW organisation, Solidarity to Organise Peace (STOP), is to hold a series of rallies demanding that the IRA restore the ceasefire.

At a press conference attended by representatives of all the major political parties in Dublin yesterday, STOP founder Mr Paul Burton called for more than 250,000 people to be at planned simultaneous assemblies in Dublin, Belfast, London, Warrington and New York on Sunday.

Mr Burton, principal of Saint Laurence O'Toole's Special School in Sheriff Street, Dublin, said all people interested in averting the "disaster" that would result from a resumption of IRA violence should "fall behind our slogan "Cease Fire, Give Us Back Our Peace".

"We want massive demonstrations. We want people who are capable of mobilising the Irish people to organise rallies in every town and parish at home and among the Irish nation abroad," Mr Burton said.

Several organisations had already committed themselves to supporting the demonstrations, including the major political parties in the Dail, the Peace Train Organisation, the Peace 1993 Committee and Women together (Northern Ireland), he said.

STOP has written to ICTU general secretary Mr Peter Cassells seeking support.

Mr Johns Hudson, of the Peace Train, said "peace has been taken from us by the IRA in London" and the name of Ireland disgraced again. It was important that unionists and loyalists should understand "there is no ambiguity among the Irish people towards the IRA".

The IRA had no mandate to conduct a campaign of violence. Government had an obligation to protect its citizens and, if the situation deteriorated, he agreed they might have to introduce internment.

Some people at the press conference, including Mr Des Geraghty of SIPTU, distanced themselves from such views on internment. Mr Geraghty said "People are mobilising for a political solution not just a ceasefire." He appealed to republicans not to permit a return to further violence. "It will not work," he said.

Denouncing the IRA, the Minister of State for European Affairs, Mr Gay Mitchell, said there was a misguided view within its ranks that it commanded a "sneaking regard" among the public. This was not true.