Leaders unite after 3rd slaying

The Catholic and Protestant leaders of Northern Ireland’s coalition government jointly pledged to crush Irish Republican Army dissidents in an exceptional show of unity Tuesday after the third killing in two days claimed by an IRA splinter group.

Police said they arrested an 18-year-old man on suspicion of involvement in the latest slaying Monday night, when a policeman was shot through the back of the head as he sat in his patrol car in Craigavon, a religiously divided town southwest of Belfast. The suspect comes from a Catholic neighborhood of the town.

The Continuity IRA said in a message to Belfast media that it killed the officer – barely 48 hours after another splinter group, the Real IRA, gunned down two British soldiers and wounded four other people.

The sudden escalation in bloodshed appeared designed to undermine Northern Ireland’s young coalition as its leaders prepared to leave for a high-profile U.S. tour capped by their first meeting with President    Barack Obama at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.

The leaders, First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, postponed that trip for the second time and appeared shoulder to shoulder at a press conference alongside Northern Ireland’s police commander, Chief Constable Hugh Orde.

McGuinness, a former IRA commander whose Sinn Fein party represents the Irish Catholic minority, decried the dissidents as “traitors to the island of Ireland.”
He called for supporters to break their traditional code of silence and pass tips to the police.

“I want to join with Peter to wholeheartedly appeal to everyone, and anyone, who has any information whatsoever about these killings, to pass that information to the police, north and south,” said McGuinness, who throughout the IRA’s 1970-97 campaign supported the killing of police. Until two years ago he withheld public statements of support for law-enforcement officials.