Mr Gerry Adams has suggested a "dirty tricks" element to new reports of a senior republican being observed in Colombia four months before the so-called Colombia Three were arrested in Bogota.
He was responding to claims that a close associate of his was in Colombia in April last year. That August the three republicans - Mr James Monaghan, Mr Martin McAuley and Mr Niall Connolly - were arrested in Bogota for alleged involvement with the FARC guerrilla movement.
Informed sources also told The Irish Times yesterday that the Colombian authorities had evidence of another senior republican travelling to Colombia.
But the Sinn Féin president, Mr Adams, yesterday insinuated that fresh allegations and media reports about IRA involvement with the FARC group were designed to damage the party's chances in tomorrow's election.
"It's very interesting that all of these happen in the month of the election," he said in Dublin.
"I have to say that people here are quite sophisticated and will see past this. Obviously the intention may be to cause a distraction in the election and some of our opponents have seized on these issues," the Sinn Féin leader added.
He would not comment on a report in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, which claimed that a leading republican had travelled to Colombia on a false passport on April 5th, returning on April 16th, 2001. The Daily Telegraph claimed it had obtained a copy of an Irish passport bearing the name of the senior republican.
It further alleged that he was accompanied on these flights by one of those arrested, Mr Connolly, Sinn Féin's representative in Cuba.
A Sinn Féin spokesman in Belfast said the man in question did not want to speak to the media about the allegations.
The Daily Telegraph quoted a "senior British diplomatic source" as stating that the Colombian trip was authorised by the IRA leadership. It reported that the IRA may have been paid in cash for the training, and that the money could have been used to purchase arms.
It also reported that a FARC guerrilla who had deserted the movement had helped one of the three arrested, Mr Monaghan, unload boxes of missiles in a rebel zone in Colombia.
It further claimed that an unnamed Dublin journalist had travelled to Colombia on a false passport in April 2001.
Colombian military personnel have claimed that the IRA trained FARC guerrillas in bomb-making techniques and that as a result the explosives effectiveness of FARC was greatly enhanced.
In the Assembly this week, the First Minister, Mr David Trimble, blamed alleged IRA training of FARC for an attack on people sheltering in a church in which over 60 people died.
The Daily Telegraph also cited this incident, stating that 119 people, many of them children, were killed in the bombing on May 2nd.
Last month, Mr Adams declined an invitation to attend a US Congressional hearing dealing with alleged IRA links to FARC.
The US House Committee on International Relations concluded that the "IRA has well-established links with the FARC narco-terrorists in Colombia", although some members of the committee criticised the report as being "short on facts and replete with surmise and opinions".
The US government is in no doubt that the Colombia Three were involved in training the FARC.
Mr Richard Haass, the State Department special envoy on Northern Ireland, told BBC 24 on Monday: "It is clear to most observers that those three gentlemen were not down in Colombia working on their Spanish or enjoying a summer holiday.
"Clearly they were down there for purposes of helping the FARC develop certain types of techniques.I don't have personally a lot of doubt about that. My principal concern is that there be no connections whatsoever from this point on."