Government officials are to hold talks in Dublin today with an international panel of experts that claims to have uncovered evidence of British army and RUC collusion in dozens of sectarian murders in Northern Ireland.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern is studying the evidence, and his officials will meet the report's authors in Dublin, according to a department spokesman.
Margaret Urwin, Justice for the Forgotten
At the Dublin publication of their findings on the deaths of 76 people in 25 loyalist atrocities during the 1970s, the panel members called on the Government to use "all diplomatic and legal powers at their disposal" to try and force the British government to fully investigate the claims.
The panel members are Prof Douglass Cassel of the Notre Dame Law School in the US; Susie Kemp, an international lawyer based in The Hague; Piers Pigou, who was an investigator for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and US lawyer and academic Stephen Sawyer.
Their report found evidence of security force involvement in 74 of the 76 sectarian murders investigated, with 38 occurring in the Republic.
Margaret Urwin, secretary for Justice for the Forgotten, said the publication of "the international and impartial report was a hugely significant moment".
She said it was "very important it was published here [in Dublin] as well as in Belfast because half of the murders were carried out in the Republic".
The panel reported senior Royal Ulster Constabulary officers were aware and approved of the collusion and that officials in London had enough information to intervene.
Prof Cassel said that the British government, for "the good of its own country", should find out how a democracy could go so far off the rails. He added that the panel had received a letter from Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain who expressed the opinion that the best way forward would be through a police investigation.
Dermot Ahern
However, the panel concluded in its report that neither the Historical Enquiries Team nor the NI Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan "have the scope, independence, transparency and credibility required to assure victims and the public that the truth has been pursued energetically and made known".
Any investigation, Prof Cassel said, "has to be capable of looking up the chain of command".
The inquiry included the May 1974 Dublin Monaghan bombings that killed 33 lives; the Miami Showband massacre in July 1975, in which three musicians and two members of the Ulster Volunteer Force gang died; and the shooting of Catholic police sergeant Joe Campbell in February 1977.
Ms Kemp said the panel had made a number of recommendations to the British government from the families including the requirement of information, the need for acknowledgement of collusion and of a failure to investigate it fully and an apology from the state.
The panel have also urged the authorities in the Republic to investigate the claims made about gardaí.
The families of six men shot by loyalists 12 years ago in a Co Down bar will meet a cross-party delegation of MPs in Westminster today.
