TWO Belfast men were being questioned by the RUC last night in connection with a bomb incident early yesterday morning at the largely nationalist Bawnmore Estate in north Belfast.
The bomb, placed under the car of a local resident, contained half a pound of commercial explosives. Loyalist paramilitaries were believed to be behind the incident, although there was no statement of admission from any group. A controlled explosion was carried out by the British army.
A Sinn Fein city councillor, Mr Bobby Lavery, said the incident was the latest in a series "designed solely to intimidate and force nationalists from the area".
The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, accused the loyalist Ulster Democratic Party of "rank hypocrisy" after its leader, Mr Gary McMichael, indicated that the loyalist ceasefire would end if the Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, met Sinn Fein ahead of an unequivocal cessation of IRA violence.
Mr McLaughlin referred to the Bawnmore Estate car bomb and said there had been five attempted bombings of Sinn Fein offices in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, the Continuity Army Council has said that, unlike the Provisional IRA, it was not engaged in a "partial campaign" of violence and would target British soldiers and RUC officers.
The CAC, which pledges allegiance to Republican Sinn Fein, has so far not launched any major attacks on members of the security forces, although it has planted bombs in Belfast and Derry and it blew up the Killyhevlin Hotel in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, last year.
In an interview with the Irish language newspaper Foinse, which was reprinted in Republican Sinn Fein's newspaper Saoirse, two CAC representatives accused the Provisional IRA of a sellout.
The CAC was formed after Republican Sinn Fein broke away from the Provisional movement in 1986 over the issue of abstention from the Dail.
The CAC representatives said they had units on both sides of the Border and planned to target British soldiers, Royal Irish Regiment members and RUC officers. They refused to rule out the possibility of attacks in England but said that they were opposed to "civilian casualties". They insinuated that a lack of personnel was restricting activities.