18 March 1999 Edition
Back issue: Licence to kill
In an interview last friday British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd declared that the IRA were ``professional killers'' who kill as their ``occupation'' and for ``pleasure'', ``no political solution will cope with that, they just have to be extirpated.'' Hurd was interviewed en route to a conference of European justice ministers where he was going to argue against the relaxation of border controls in 1992 because of the ``threat of international terrorism''.
In Ireland, Hurd's remarks were interpreted as a dramatic change in British policy, the search for a ``political solution'' was being shelved at the expense of a purely military solution. Unionists, who have been consistently calling for an extension of the shoot-to-kill tactics, including OUP spokesperson Ken Maginnis who earlier this month had been advocating extensive deployment of the SAS, expressed the hope that Hurd's remarks did herald a change of policy. Southern opposition politicians objected that the remarks were ``unhelpful'' (Peter Barry, Fine Gael) and that only ``constitutional politics'' could ``destroy the IRA'' (Geraldine Kennedy, Progressive Democrats).
In Ireland, Hurd's remarks were interpreted as a dramatic change in British policy, the search for a ``political solution'' was being shelved at the expense of a purely military solution. Unionists, who have been consistently calling for an extension of the shoot-to-kill tactics, including OUP spokesperson Ken Maginnis who earlier this month had been advocating extensive deployment of the SAS, expressed the hope that Hurd's remarks did herald a change of policy. Southern opposition politicians objected that the remarks were ``unhelpful'' (Peter Barry, Fine Gael) and that only ``constitutional politics'' could ``destroy the IRA'' (Geraldine Kennedy, Progressive Democrats).