The Progressive Unionist Party spokesman, Mr David Ervine, has warned that loyalist splinter groups are planning further violence in order to put pressure on the IRA to break its ceasefire.
At his party's offices on Belfast's Shankill Road yesterday, Mr Ervine, who is an Assembly member for East Belfast, said he expected to see the Loughinisland bombing followed by further attacks.
"I think we're going to see more of it, no matter what way the political circumstances go in Northern Ireland. If the structures that one hopes are set in place begin to function and work, these people will become extremely strident. "They will realise that they are substantially defeated and it will be like a recoil, almost like a wounded animal. On the other hand, if this process goes down it is the opinion of many, including myself, that it will certainly not be replaced by a pro-unionist agenda.
"That will create some dismay within the unionist community and therefore an atmosphere which these people will attempt to tap into. So either way I think they are going to be with us for a while, until we see successes by the RUC." The Loughinisland attack was claimed by the Orange Volunteers, but Mr Ervine alleged that many of the people in that group, as well as the Red Hand Defenders, were also members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force at present. Mr Ervine, whose party is the political wing of the mainstream loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force, said: "I am convinced and assured, in fact, that many of the people involved in the Orange Volunteers, and indeed the Red Hand Defenders, are people we would have understood to have been members as well of the LVF."
He described the dissident loyalists as an "amalgam" of three sets of people. "One set would be Scripture-quoting so-called Christians, one element would be drug dealers and some of them would be naive fools wound up by the suggestion that `We're sold out'. Undoubtedly they pose a threat."
A primary aim of the latest violence was "to try and pull the Provos off their ceasefire". He added: "There are many within fundamentalist Protestantism who would go into absolute dismay if the Provos did decommission."
Pastor Kenny McClinton, who acts as an intermediary for the LVF with Gen John de Chastelain's decommissioning body, has denied any overlap in membership between the LVF and the Orange Volunteers. Senior LVF prisoners in the Maze have also categorically denied any involvement.
Asked about the decommissioning issue, the PUP spokesman said it was not "deliverable" at this time. Mr Ervine continued: "Adams and Trimble will tell you that they are both at maximum risk level in relation to the issue of decommissioning. Now, let's assume they are both accurate, then where is the compromise?"
If the UUP and Sinn Fein leaders kept to the position that there was no room to manoeuvre, "then the process goes down". Mr Ervine said he had tried to start a public debate on how to overcome the difficulty, but other peripheral issues had been thrust to the front instead.
"I was suggesting that choreography was possible, but I don't think there has been any choreography." He had seen what he thought were signals being exchanged between the UUP and Sinn Fein more recently, "but that still doesn't tell me where the compromise is on the issue of arms".
Asked about the continuing paramilitary beatings, Mr Ervine said they were "immoral and wrong". The key to bringing them to an end was first of all to implement the Belfast Agreement. "We have to dismantle what is effectively a 30-year-old subculture of paramilitarism. I have some ideas, but I don't think Gary McMichael, David Ervine and Gerry Adams can be held solidly and solely responsible for that job, I think we all as a society have a responsibility to diminish the levels of paramilitary involvement in our community and the paramilitary controls in our community," Mr Ervine said.