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UUP to make 'significant' Northern Ireland powersharing announcement UUP to make 'significant' Northern Ireland powersharing announcement
(34 minutes later)
Ulster Unionist party MPs and assembly members are to meet on Wednesday before making a “significant” announcement about powersharing in Northern Ireland. One of the five parties in Northern Ireland’s powersharing executive – the Ulster Unionist party (UUP) – is to make a “significant announcement” on Wednesday regarding its continued participation in the devolved government in Belfast.
Unionists have threatened to exclude Sinn Féin from the ministerial executive after the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said that the IRA still exists. A unionist walk out from the Stormont body is another option. Members of the UK parliament, the Northern Ireland assembly and party councillors are meeting in Belfast to vote on a proposal about the UUP’s future inside the devolved administration.
The emergency meeting was prompted by the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s (PSNI) assessment over the weekend that members of the Provisional IRA (PIRA) carried out the murder of ex-republican prisoner Kevin McGuigan earlier this month.
Unionists have warned that evidence of continued PIRA activities including murder would mark a breach of key moves to restore devolution back in 2005. They point to an IRA statement in 2005 that the organisation was disbanding as a military force – a key demand from unionist parties before they would go into regional government with Sinn Féin.
Related: PSNI: Provisional IRA leadership did not sanction Kevin McGuigan murderRelated: PSNI: Provisional IRA leadership did not sanction Kevin McGuigan murder
The PSNI also said some IRA members were involved in the murder of father of nine Kevin McGuigan in Belfast two weeks ago but it was not sanctioned at a senior level. The Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, said on Sunday that the PIRA “had gone away” while party colleagues have claimed that the current crisis over the McGuigan murder was being exploited for political gain by opponents north and south of the Irish border.
Ireland’s justice minister Frances Fitzgerald has ordered a “fresh assessment” of the activities of the Provisional IRA by Irish police. If the UUP were to leave the executive in protest over claims that the PIRA still exists in some form and is active, then this would pile enormous pressure on the largest unionist party, the DUP, to either try to expel Sinn Féin from the coalition or, as is more likely, force the party to pull down the regional government.
The PSNI analysis – almost 20 years after the Provisional IRA’s last ceasefire and a decade on from decommissioning its weapons – has triggered another political controversy at Stormont. UUP leader and former television presenter Mike Nesbitt is to make the announcement at a press conference at about 12.30pm.
Unionists have threatened a bid to exclude Sinn Féin from the devolved powersharing executive. Sinn Féin said there was no basis for the threats.
But the Northern Ireland secretary, Theresa Villiers, said she remained satisfied that all parties in the assembly remained committed to peace.
The Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, said over the weekend the IRA had “gone away”.