The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, has denied that the party leadership intervened to clamp down on some Provisional IRA members in Co Tyrone who were allegedly involved in intimidating members of Cookstown District Policing Partnership (DPP).
Mr Adams said he denied yesterday's report in The Irish Times that he and Mr Martin McGuinness and other senior Sinn Féin figures were angered at the alleged intimidation, and through Sinn Féin in Tyrone made their feelings known to those allegedly responsible.
About two weeks ago SDLP and independent nationalist members of Cookstown DPP were told by the PSNI that they were facing intimidation from "mainstream republicans".
The PSNI chief constable, Mr Hugh Orde, last week said that the Provisional IRA had been "engaged in some low level" intimidation.
He added, however, that most of the intimidation was coming from the "Real IRA".
Independent nationalist member of the Cookstown DPP Ms Teresa Rooney resigned from the body because of the threats.
Mr Adams emphatically denied yesterday's Irish Time report that "minor" IRA activists acting without the sanction of the local leadership had intimidated members of Cookstown DPP.
The report said this angered the Sinn Féin leadership of Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness, and that through Sinn Féin in Tyrone this annoyance was conveyed to the IRA members.
The sources quoted in the article reconfirmed to The Irish Times yesterday that minor IRA members in Tyrone were involved in the intimidation.
They said that this caused annoyance to Mr McGuinness and Mr Adams, and that the Sinn Féin leadership in Tyrone reprimanded the local IRA members allegedly involved.
Mr Adams said the report was "untrue".
He said that neither he nor Mr McGuinness had intervened "in any way" to clamp down on anyone in Tyrone.
Mr Adams also denied that any IRA members in Tyrone had engaged in intimidation of members of Cookstown DPP. He said that the report was based on an attempt to push an "SDLP agenda".
Meanwhile, the Sinn Féin chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said that Sinn Féin members would engage in a "peaceful and dignified" protest outside a meeting of Strabane DPP tonight. There would be "no question" of calling off the protest.
"It will be a very peaceful, dignified, legitimate and reasonable protest," said Mr McLaughlin.
"That I think will do away with all the spurious propaganda about Sinn Féin in some way as a result of its disagreement on policing being responsible for the violent actions of people who are more opposed to us than they are to unionists, who are more opposed to us than they are to the British.
"We have no responsibility for their stupidity, and we appeal to them to get into the programme, to get behind the peace process and abandon their actions."
