President Bush's special adviser yesterday increased pressure on Sinn Fein over the arrest of three suspected IRA members in Colombia.
After meeting the Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr Reid, in London, Mr Richard Haass said the US had "important national interests" in Colombia, and any co-operation with illegal organisations was "extremely, extremely disturbing".
An Ulster Unionist delegation, comprising Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, Mr Chris McGimpsey and Lord Maginnis, begins a five-day trip to the US today to brief politicians and media on alleged links between the IRA and Colombian rebels. "Our primary focus this time is not on the administration but on Congress because we understand there are plans to have hearings on the Colombian connection in the next few weeks," Mr Donaldson said.
As Mr Haass prepared to travel to Dublin today to meet senior Government officials and to Belfast tomorrow for talks with the main political parties, he made it clear he would raise directly with Sinn Fein the arrest of the three IRA suspects.
"I will bring up the situation in Colombia. The United States has important national interests in Colombia. We have got hundreds of Americans on the ground there. We have put in hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to try to help that country battle the challenges of insurrection, of drug-trafficking and so forth.
"So any co-operation with people in Colombia that are challenging the rules of law, that are promoting the sale of drugs in co-operation with those people in the US, raises extremely, extremely disturbing and important questions."
In London Dr Reid said he hoped the "appalling events" outside the Holy Cross school last week, "rather than depressing politicians in Northern Ireland, act as a spur to make sure that we try to show by example that political problems can be resolved by politics and by dialogue".
He said the British government had instituted a twin-track initiative to resolve the crisis.
Meanwhile, Cuba's ruling Communist Party announced yesterday it was looking forward to a coming visit by the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, but could not confirm the date.
RTE journalist, Mr Charlie Bird, was detained for several hours yesterday in Bogota by Colombian security forces after a BBC television crew was caught secretly filming inside a jail.
The journalist has been in Bogota trying to get an interview with the three Irishmen suspected of having links with FARC rebels. The BBC crew were filming in the jail's cafeteria when they were confronted by angry security forces. Mr Bird was in the cafeteria at the same time, though he was not involved in the filming. All were released later.