Daily Dispatch 9th August 2006

MAGINNESS: BRITISH MUST NOT ENTERTAIN PAYING OFF LOYALIST PARAMILITARIES

British Ministers must not entertain paying off loyalist paramilitaries who have yet to decommission a single bullet, SDLP North Belfast MLA Alban Maginness has stated. Speaking following a find of UVF explosives and rumours of a push against a convicted rapist UDA leader, Mr Maginness stated:
“The finding of UVF powergel explosives is a stark reminder that none of the main loyalist organisations has decommissioned a single bullet. Worse, their leaders are up front that it’s not even on their agenda. What is on their agenda though, according to David Ervine, is threatening violence if the two Governments engage in totally sensible North South cooperation.

What kind of perverted thinking do they have to threaten us all just because the two Governments may work together on sensible issues like better roads, free travel for pensioners and a decent Belfast/Dublin train service? Does the UVF really believe that that is a threat to all our futures? And that their drug dealing, theft and child beating are not?

Meanwhile, the UDA seem to think that intimidating the most blatant UDA extortionists and a convicted UDA rapist out of the North should be just enough entitle them to a big pot of public money. Again, without going to the bother of decommissioning a single bullet.

Nobody should be fooled by this. Just because other UDA leaders don’t wear the same ghetto fabulous gear and are not covered in orange tan does not mean that they are not themselves up to their necks in crime.

What is required from all loyalist paramilitaries is not a more discreet criminal lifestyle, but a total end to that lifestyle. As for community work, the only work all our communities want them to do is to collect their guns and bombs and bring them down to be scrapped.

That is what the British Government needs to tell them loud and clear to do. And that nothing less will do. It’s time for the Government to end the ambiguity and put loyalists paramilitaries clear on what the Good Friday Agreement requires of them.”

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