PRESSURE is mounting for the exclusion of fringe loyalist parties from political talks due to begin at Stormont Castle next week, after a bomb attack on the parents of a dissident loyalist.
A pipe bomb was thrown into the south Belfast home of Alexander and June Kerr on Sunday night. Their son, Alex, and another leading loyalist, Mr Billy Wright, are facing a death threat from the Combined Loyalist Military Command.
The Northern Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, refused yesterday to respond to demands from mainstream unionist politicians that the Progressive Unionist and Ulster Democratic parties be expelled from negotiations.
The DUP MP, the Rev William McCrea, said Sir Patrick should break his silence "and make it clear where the PUP and UDP stand in relation to their participation in the talks".
The DUP is expected to raise the matter with the chairman of the negotiations, Senator George Mitchell, when they reconvene on Monday.
Mr Alex Kerr, the UDA's former south Belfast commander, and Mr Wright, a leading UVF supporter in Portadown, Co Armagh, have joined forces to oppose the CLMC leadership and demand a more militant stance.
Mr Kerr is currently in prison on remand, charged with arranging a meeting between journalists and an illegal organisation a fortnight ago. The CLMC has ordered him to leave the North on release or be killed. Speaking from prison, he said he would rather die than compromise his political beliefs.
Mr Alexander Kerr snr, who was celebrating his 60th birthday at his home in Willisfield Avenue, was watching television with his wife when the device exploded. Another son was upstairs.
Mrs Kerr narrowly escaped injury when the armchair she was sitting in took the full force of the blast. The couple were treated for shock at the Royal Victoria Hospital.
Standing in his wrecked living room yesterday, Mr Kerr snr said: "It's a miracle we were not killed. The people who did this came to murder us. They are scum, but the people who sent them out are bigger scum."
"They couldn't get my son or Billy Wright, so I was an easy target. I was half expecting a brick through the window, but never a bomb to kill us. We have lived here 20 years and we will not be intimidated from our home."
Mr Wright described it as "a disgraceful attack on the softest of soft targets". He accused the perpetrators of cowardice. "How can they call themselves loyalists if they carry out attacks on loyalist pensioners?"
He insisted he would continue to defy the CLMC's death threat.
The PUP leader, Mr David Ervine, repudiated the bombing, but refused to use the word "condemn". He said: "I could say I condemn this or that, but what damn good does it do?"
He described the attack as unjustifiable, but said he had spoken to the CMLC and had been assured that it was not involved. Another senior PUP member, Mr Billy Hutchinson, claimed that the bomb was a "dirty tricks" operation by loyalist dissidents.
"This act was carried out by supporters of Billy Wright and Alex Kerr. I ask them to stop forthwith," he said. The Ulster Unionist party honorary secretary Mr Reg Empey, said he hoped that mediation could end the dispute before talks reconvened at Stormont.
However, there are signs that the rift is widening. A group of loyalists staged a show of strength in south Antrim on Sunday in support of the dissidents and warned that any attack on them would be met "blow for blow".