The US administration yesterday welcomed the re-engagement of the IRA with the decommissioning body but insisted it must go the next step and begin decommissioning.
"We welcome the statement but the IRA now needs to take action," a State Department official said. "While there has been some progress on decommmissioning we now need a restoration of the offer on modalities and a beginning to actual decommissioning. No other single act would have greater impact on the other partners and the prospects for the peace process."
On the arrest of alleged IRA members in Colombia the spokesman said: "We are still trying to assess what transpired. As Ambassador [Richard] Haass has said, if there was any cooperation between Irish republicans and the FARC it should never happen again. Any evidence that there is such co-operation now or in the future could have serious consequences."
The comments reflect a briefing given earlier in the week by Mr Haass, the administration's "point man" on Northern Ireland, in which he made clear the US was not intending to make the IRA and Sinn Fein pay for past engagement with FARC, although it believes such links to have been of a terrorist nature.
The US is, however, clearly putting Sinn Fein on notice it has not ruled out "consequences" as its investigations proceed. US officials believe that just as the attacks in the US opened up possibilities of breaking "logjams" in the Middle East, the same is true of Northern Ireland, and that it behoves Sinn Fein to respond radically.
In the medium and long term the US attitude to Sinn Fein and its activities in the US will depend on the extent to which it does respond. Upbeat public statements go nowhere near reflecting the anger that diplomatic sources confirm exists in the administration at what they see as an attack by the IRA on key US interests in Colombia and a major breach of faith with a partner in the peace process.
