Ex-IRA chief in N.Ireland gov't condemns IRA dissidents as `no-hopers,' detached from reality

Martin McGuinness, the former Irish Republican Army commander who helps lead the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, denounced IRA dissidents Thursday as "no-hopers" who wanted to force the British army to redeploy on the streets.

Deputy First Minister McGuinness offered his most high-profile denunciation to date of former IRA colleagues as he stood alongside his Protestant power-sharing colleague, First Minister Ian Paisley, and Irish government leaders at an all-Ireland governmental summit north of Dublin.

"There are still people within our society who believe that violence is the way forward. Well my message to them is they ... are no-hopers," McGuinness said. "They are people who are going nowhere and they are people who are totally and absolutely detached from the reality of life on this island."

He was speaking out a day after Northern Ireland police resumed random road checkpoints as a deterrent to car bombs _ and four days after IRA dissidents declared they were about to go back on the "offensive" in the British territory. Such roadchecks had rarely featured on Northern Ireland roads since the late 1990s.

Personal security on potential assassination targets, including some power-sharing leaders, has also been increased in recent days.

Paisley confirmed that police considered him a likely target and had beefed up his bodyguard detail.

"You are looking at one who is under threat. ... But, of course, we are not going to let that stand in our way," Paisley told reporters. He appealed to people in the Catholic community who knew about dissident IRA activities to tell police.

McGuinness said IRA dissidents stood no chance of achieving anything other than a retreat to past British security practices. He said, perversely, they seemed to want this because it would undermine Northern Ireland's 9-month-old coalition, the key achievement of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord.

"They want the British Army to come back. They want to see huge numbers of British soldiers on the streets of Belfast and Derry," McGuinness said, referring to the second-largest city in Northern Ireland, where he was once the top IRA commander. "That is not what the people want and that is not going to happen."

British troops were deployed in August 1969 to support the Northern Ireland police amid heavy Protestant-Catholic rioting. They soon became a target of a newly founded Provisional IRA in which McGuinness served as a commander for decades. The IRA killed more than 800 soldiers, including off-duty troops from a predominantly Protestant, locally recruited regiment.

The Provisional IRA ceased fire in 1997, and formally renounced violence and disarmed in 2005. The British army completed a decade-long program of cutbacks in July 2007 and today has fewer than 5,000 soldiers based in Northern Ireland that are rarely seen in public and have no role in provincial security.