Ulster Unionist Party won't sit down with Sinn Fein

IRA Bomb Warning Threatens Peace Talks

The device, which has not yet been found, is the first IRA action since the shooting of Pc Alice Collins in Londonderry on April 10 and ends an unofficial ceasefire said to have been in place since then. A caller using a recognised IRA codeword informed a Belfast radio station that a landmine had been abandoned on a roundabout on the Poleglass estate in west Belfast. The IRA said its "engineers" had made the device safe before abandoning it due to "civilian activity in the area".

Unionists immediately called for the end of talks between civil servants and Sinn Fein, authorised by Prime Minister Tony Blair soon after he came into office, on the condition that events on the ground remained free of violence.

Taylor: says end the talks

Ulster Unionist Party deputy leader John Taylor criticised the Government's policy. He said "One week after the Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, announced there was an unofficial ceasefire the republican terrorists place a bomb in Poleglass...Clearly the intelligence being given to the Secretary of State is flawed. The Government should stop playing games with Sinn Fein and immediately bring and end to the talks."

Civil servants have held two rounds of exploratory talks with Sinn Fein in the past fortnight, to see if some sort of agreement can be reached to allow the IRA to declare a new ceasefire. Mr Blair made it clear that the talks could only go ahead if peace was maintained. This setback comes as Sinn Fein, with all the main political parties in Northern Ireland, attends a major peace conference in South Africa, where the parties have been addressed by President Nelson Mandela on the problems they face in brokering a peace settlement.