International Monitoring Commission report: Politicians must respond to "the challenge of paramilitary activity" and should not be associated with such activity, former CIA deputy director Mr Dick Kerr told a press conference in Belfast yesterday.
Speaking on behalf of the four members of the Independent Monitoring Commission, Mr Kerr said parties and political leaders "must support the rule of law and the criminal justice institutions".
The report he released outlines the various paramilitary groups and the political parties associated with them.
"Many remain active and have the capacity to reopen a terrorist campaign. While paramilitary murders are down, they are still high and have not exceeded 18 a year since the Belfast Agreement. It is not an insignificant number." He said violence was on the increase, with loyalists much more involved than republicans.
"Shootings plus assaults over the five-year period from 1999 to 2002 \ almost double those in the period from 1991 to '94."
Give Northern Ireland's small population of 1.7 million, these figures would be the equivalent of 63,000 shootings in Britain. There has been at times "horrible violence", he added.
He said growing illegal activity by paramilitary groups were fuelled by rivalries and their desire to impose their control over individuals and communities and their growing involvement in organised crime.
Such organised crime was being used to fund paramilitary activity and the situation was exacerbated by what Mr Kerr called "a damaging level of tolerance" of such activity by some communities.
He said further IMC reports would deal with the paramilitaries' growing role in organised crime.
The commissioners said they would not name individuals whom they believe to be senior members of paramilitary groups at this point. But they added that future reports would reflect developments on the issue. Naming names in future would "not be ruled out".
Mr Joe Brosnan, the former senior civil servant at the Department of Justice, said: "We are not a court of law with the same standards of evidence. We make our best judgment on the basis of the information that we have available."
Referring specifically to the Tohill case, Mr Kerr said the commission was mindful of criminal cases pending.
"We believe that the operation was one planned and undertaken by the PIRA." He also said the commissioners concluded that two Assembly parties, Sinn Féin and the Progressive Unionist Party, had "links with paramilitary groups meriting specific IMC recommendation".
He said that future reports could outline how individuals whom the IMC believes to be in positions of leadership in paramilitaries might be held personally and publicly to account.
"The IMC will invite their comments before reaching a final view."
Had the Northern Assembly not been in suspension, Mr Kerr said the commission "would have recommended measures up to, and possibly including exclusion from office for the PUP and Sinn Féin".
Paramilitaries should not be tolerated nor should legitimacy be given to them, Mr Kerr said. They should end all involvement in criminality and should also decommission all weapons.
Future reports "would go where the evidence takes us", he said, concluding with the promise: "We'll be back."