The IRA and the UDA have each carried out more than 50 punishment beatings and shootings in the last year, Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde claimed today.
At the same time Sinn Féin said it had given a dossier on attacks by loyalists to the two Governments.
The Ulster Unionist Party leader Mr David Trimble is today preparing for talks with the British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair at Downing Street in an attempt to have Sinn Féin ousted from a review of the elfast Agreement.
The PSNI chief constable told a policing board meeting in Belfast the IRA was matching loyalists' levels of brutality.
He said: "I have attributed over 50 punishment beatings and shootings to the UDA and I would probably put a similar number of these on the Provisional IRA."
Mr Orde's assessment came amid continued unionist anger over the alleged abduction of dissident republican Mr Bobby Tohill from a Belfast city centre bar.
The thwarted kidnapping was blamed on the Provisionals by Mr Orde and led to Mr Trimble leading his party out of the talks aimed at restoring devolved government in the North when no sanctions were taken against Sinn Féin.
Sinn Féin this morning published a dossier of sectarian attacks which have been carried out by loyalist paramilitaries in the Lagan Valley area over the past number of years.
The party's policing spokesman, Mr Gerry Kelly, the dossier had been presented to the two governments "and we demanded from them answers on their response or lack of it to ongoing sectarian attacks."
"If the two governments and the other parties wish to discuss paramilitarism then they need to discuss it in the round. It cannot be confined to an anti-Sinn Féin or anti-Republican agenda," Mr Kelly said.
"We asked the two government's where the special meetings were to discuss the sectarian campaign being waged by the unionist paramilitaries.
"Where were the special meetings to discuss the attacks on a 105 year old woman in North Belfast? Where were the meetings to discuss the DUP role in Ulster Resistance or the role of British government agents within the various unionist paramilitary gangs?"
Additional reporting PA
