An IRA prisoner was on the run in the North last night after escaping from the Maze Prison. A security operation was mounted and the Ulster Unionists said today's visit by Mr Gerry Adams to Downing Street should be cancelled.
The escapee was named by prison officials as Liam Averill (32), of Maghera, Co Derry who was serving a life sentence for killing two men in the village of Garvagh in 1994, before the first IRA ceasefire.
Averill went missing after an annual Christmas party organised in the jail for the children of republican prisoners. It was said he escaped in a bus containing prisoners' relatives and may have been dressed as a woman.
The prisoner went missing around lunchtime but prison staff did not notice his absence until early evening. Apparently he was not eligible for Christmas leave.
The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, said: "This is an important breach of security. It is essential that we identify precisely how this happened and I shall be discussing the setting up of an inquiry - the terms of reference of which I shall set - with my officials."
Mr Reg Empey from the Ulster Unionist Party delegation to the Stormont talks said the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, should call off today's meeting with the Sinn Fein president.
"It's a very serious development because it is certainly not the action of an organisation which is supposedly committed to exclusively peaceful means and I believe that the Prime Minister would be well-advised to call off his meeting. We warned him that it was going to be a high-risk strategy because we did not believe that the republican movement is committed to exclusively peaceful means yet."
The justice spokesman of the Democratic Unionist Party, Mr Ian Paisley Jnr, said responsibility must rest with the British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, who should resign if he could not resolve the situation. He added that the North's security minister, Mr Adam Ingram, "ought to pack his bags immediately".
The leader of the loyalist Ulster Democratic Party, Mr Gary McMichael, said it would be "entirely wrong" if loyalist prisoners were punished for the actions of republicans.
The escape is the first successful breakout from the Maze since 38 republican prisoners escaped in September 1983, after they produced guns and overpowered prison staff.
Meanwhile, a 28-year-old man from Downpatrick was shot in both legs in what police described as a "paramilitary-style shooting" in a laneway of the Model Farm Estate, a nationalist area of the town, yesterday evening. His condition in hospital was described as comfortable.