Services held throughout North

Events to mark Remembrance Day have been held across the North, with the main service taking place at the cenotaph at Belfast…

Events to mark Remembrance Day have been held across the North, with the main service taking place at the cenotaph at Belfast City Hall.

The Lord Mayor of Belfast laid a wreath on behalf the people of the city. Describing the ceremony as "poignant", he said it was the first time that wreaths had been laid bearing the name of the new Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Other services were held in Derry, Lisburn, Co Antrim, Bangor, Co Down, and Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, where those present commemorated the 11 people killed in a Provisional IRA bomb which exploded during a Remembrance Day service in the town 14 years ago .

Meanwhile, an Ulster Unionist peer, Lord Laird of Artigarvan, has called on the Irish Government to remember policemen killed by republican paramilitaries in the Republic.

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Speaking at a dinner in Dublin on Saturday night, he said commemoration of the 493 members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police would be "a most timely and opportune gesture, showing parity of esteem, total equality and respect for both traditions on the island".

The recent official commemoration and reburial in Dublin of IRA members from the 1920s had caused "deep offence" to many people, Lord Laird insisted.

"I believe the Dublin Government was entitled to commemorate the IRA as symbols of history on this island. However, they should carry out a similar commemoration for the 493 RIC officers who were murdered in the South during the same period, many in very brutal circumstances.

"All of these men were Irishmen and most were members of the Roman Catholic faith. I now appeal to Bertie Ahern to show, in a spirit of constructiveness, that those who were murdered have a right to be remembered as members of the Irish nation", he concluded.