PUP meets to consider response to IMC

The loyalist Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) will today consider whether to sever contact with the Independent Monitoring Commission…

The loyalist Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) will today consider whether to sever contact with the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC).

The IMC, set up to assess paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland, last week recommended imposing financial penalties on the PUP over their links to the Ulster Volunteer Force.

PUP leader Mr David Ervine indicated ahead of the meeting he was not prepared to meet the commission ever again, claiming it had "badly set back" efforts to move the peace process forward.

Last week the IMC also threatened, after the publication of its first report, to publicly identify members of Sinn Féin in senior leadership roles in the Provisional IRA.

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Mr Ervine said: "The IMC report was an absolute insult to people like ourselves who have worked hard to bring about a peaceful society.

"It was full of middle class morality and produced by government lackeys with no real feel of the working-class loyalist community or appreciation of the work that has been undertaken to move this process forward.

"It is contradictory in that we are fined for Ulster Volunteer Force violence while at the same time the report says the PUP leadership may not be in a position to determine UVF actions," Mr Ervine said.

"I really do think it has set back the process badly and, while it is a golden rule that a politician should never say never, as far as I am concerned the IMC's credibility is zero and I will never, ever meet it again."

Sinn Féin has also denounced the commission whose report repeated Northern Ireland police chief Hugh Orde's claim that the Provisional IRA was behind the attempted abduction and beating of Belfast republican Bobby Tohill in February.

PA