THE RUC has begun an investigation into an incident in which armed and masked IRA men appeared on the streets of Belfast yesterday afternoon in a rare public display. It took place during an Easter Rising commemoration in north Belfast at which a Sinn Fein speaker sharply criticised the British Labour Party's record on Northern Ireland.
The IRA display was seen by observers as a very serious development, reflecting the fragile political and security situation in Northern Ireland. It is expected to cause some difficulties in the peace process.
The two IRA men appeared suddenly while a message from republican prisoners was being read. The crowd responded eagerly to a call for a round of applause for "the Irish Republican Army: these are the men that are protecting our community ... the only protection we have in our district".
One of the IRA men waved a Kalashnikov in the air, the other brandished an Uzi submachinegun. Both wore balaclavas. The crowd comprised about 1,000 republican supporters from Ardoyne, the Bone and Ligoniel districts. Among them was Mr Eddie Copeland, who survived a bomb, believed to have been planted by loyalists, which exploded under his car last December.
After the IRA men had left the crowd was addressed by the Sinn Fein councillor from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, Mr Francie Molloy. He said the record of Mr Roy Mason as Secretary of State "makes us wary of any future Labour government".
Referring to the current Labour spokeswoman on Northern Ireland, he said: "Mo Mowlam would need to come up with more than fancy words."
He added: "The British Labour agenda, let's be quite clear, is a return to Stormont under a power-sharing executive and, as we have said before, a return to Stormont is not acceptable to republicans."
The tone of his remarks contrasted with the more conciliatory approach to Labour adopted by his Sinn Fein colleague, Mr Martin McGuinness, at a republican rally in Co Tyrone on Monday.
Mr McGuinness described Dr Mowlam's statement that Sinn Fein could be in talks by June 3rd if there was agenuine IRA ceasefire as "encouraging". He said he hoped it was a sign of "new and progressive thinking within the British Labour Party".
Mr Molloy asked what the expected British Labour government was going to do for republican prisoners.
"Will they release Roisin McAliskey, not just because she is a young girl, pregnant and in jail, but because she is innocent, because she is an Irish republican hostage? She should be released and we call for her release immediately."
Sinn Fein was criticised yesterday in a statement from the SDLP candidate in the West Tyrone constituency, Mr Joe Byrne, who said the party had to accept that politics "must be about dialogue and not an amorphous mixture of violence and coercion".
He said the people of West Tyrone were sick and tired of excuses", whether from the British government or Sinn Fein.
He called on Sinn Fein to abandon its "hurler on the ditch" approach to Westminster.
The RUC said that anybody who displayed weapons in this manner "deserves to be treated with the utmost contempt".
Meanwhile, republicans were blamed for an arson attack yesterday morning on the Co Tyrone home of Mr Joel Patton, spokesman for the Spirit of Drumcree faction in the Orange Order. Several other Protestant homes in the east Tyrone area were also attacked.
Mr Patton said: "When you have a profile like mine and speak your mind the way I do, then you expect this sort of thing, but I'm the third generation of my family in this house and I'll be going nowhere. I'm quite convinced republicans were behind it."
Several people have been interviewed by the Royal Ulster Constabulary after the discovery of what they believe was a pipe bomb factory in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim.