Priest offers to meet RIRA over new threat to murder police
A PRIEST who has offered to meet the Real IRA said the door to dialogue must be kept open.
Fr Michael Canny's call came as the dissident group threatened to kill more police officers. The warning came in a statement from a masked man at a 32 County Sovereignty Movement rally in Derry.
Fr Canny has offered to meet the group, though he believes they are interested only in pursuing their goals through violence.
He said today "every opportunity has to be availed of" to let RIRA members know that "human life is sacred" and "all they are bringing is death, despair and misery".
Fr Canny called on them to stop and reflect on their actions. "The only way to achieve what (they) want is to go down the democratic process," he said.
BANKRUPT
The Derry priest said the overwhelming majority of people knew that Northern Ireland needed a "stable police service".
"These people (the Real IRA) are very much out of kilter with the rest of the people in the city," he added.
Former SDLP leader and Foyle MP Mark Durkan said: "The Real IRA's words are intended to intimidate everyone.
"But their pretensions to legitimacy will impress no one.
"Politicians do not really have to argue that this group is morally and politically bankrupt when they are driven to attack and threaten nationalists who want to serve the community and their country through a policing vocation."
In a statement read out at the City Cemetery in Derry, a masked member of the Real IRA said: "Oglaigh na hEireann urge all self-respecting Irishmen and women to resist the insult that is the visit of a British monarch to Irish soil."
The masked man went on to try to portray the visit of the British monarch here as a plot to further the interests of "a self-serving elite".
He said included in this so-called group were big business and the media.
The rant, which also referred to a "gombeen class," included a claim the Queen of England was wanted for war crimes in Ireland and was "not wanted on Irish soil",
The Real IRA said police officers would be targeted "regardless of their religion".
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- Cormac Murphy
