 The IRA has issued a veiled threat that it will "abandon" its ceasefire in a deepening of the political crisis in Northern Ireland. Since the British and Irish governments accepted the assessment of Ulster's chief police officer Hugh Orde that the Provisional IRA were behind the £26.5 million Northern Bank raid last year, the situation has got worse. Republicans have insisted they were not responsible for the record breaking raid and blame "securocrats" trying to undermine the peace process for the accusation. But their position is becoming more isolated with the two governments, both police forces and all the other parties accepting their guilt and the Independent Monitoring Commission report into the incident expected to back the police view. The IRA responded to the accusations by withdrawing their offer to decommission weapons as part of an attempt to restore the devolved institutions. |