Smith urges parties to oppose criminality

The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, has urged Northern political parties with links to paramilitaries to use their influence to ensure the high levels of criminality detailed by the Independent Monitoring Commission are greatly reduced before the commission reports again in six months.

However, he stopped short of endorsing a proposal by the commission to name individuals in Sinn Féin who also fill senior positions in the IRA.

When asked if they should be named, Mr Smith said: "Well, I'm not too sure. The one thing I would say is that very considerable progress has been made in the past 10 years. And there are members in the Sinn Féin party who have played a very significant role in trying to change the IRA away from paramilitary activities. Those that have that influence need to use it. I wouldn't like to comment any further than that."

When asked if naming the individuals would undermine their influence on the IRA, he said: "I'm just asking them to use their influence, that's as far as I want to go." Mr Smith said much of the content of the commission's report was already well known. There was "not much point in anybody questioning the integrity of the commission".

Referring to the level of criminal activity in which many groups on ceasefire were still involved, he said: "It's extremely serious and very disappointing. It's an abject failure to honour serious commitments to the Irish people in terms of ensuring that, as you move into a democratic process, that smuggling and racketeering and punishment beatings and killings are totally off the agenda. It's also very bad internationally. The picture being presented is that there are still individuals in paramilitary activity side by side with everything that we tried to do in the context of the Good Friday agreement.

"We must see in the next report from the commission a significant change in terms of those kinds of statistics. These commitments [to peaceful means] are just going to have to be honoured, it's as simple as that."

Mr Smith was speaking at Casement Aerodrome, Baldonnel, after taking delivery of three €7.5 million PC-9M training aircraft from Swiss company Pilatus. The remaining five aircraft in the €60 million order would be delivered in June, he said. The new aircraft would "upgrade very considerably the ability of the Air Corps to train our pilots in a first-class way".

A tender process for six light utility helicopters would begin within weeks.