N. Ireland leaders pledge unity after killings

updated 1:55 p.m. ET March 10, 2009

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - 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 two suspects — a 37-year-old man and 17-year-old boy — 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. Both were arrested in a Catholic neighborhood near the scene of the slaying in Craigavon, southwest of Belfast.

The Continuity IRA had 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.

Security crisis
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.

"We need to pledge our support to Hugh Orde," McGuinness said as the Englishman stood beside him.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown denounced "murderers who are trying to distort, disrupt and destroy a political process that is working for the people of Northern Ireland."

Video   Renewed violence grips Northern Ireland March 10: Irish Republican Army dissidents claim responsibility for fatally shooting a policeman, just days after two soldiers were shot and killed. msnbc.com

The Continuity IRA said in a message using a prearranged code word that it killed Const. Stephen Carroll, 48, as he sat in his patrol car Monday night in the town of Craigavon, southwest of Belfast. The breakaway group threatened to keep targeting police "as long as there is British involvement in Ireland."

Northern Ireland has suffered its first killings of British security forces since 1998 — the year that rival British Protestant and Irish Catholic politicians struck a peace deal designed to leave behind decades of bloodshed and promote a future based on cooperation and compromise.

"A good husband has been taken away from me and my life has been destroyed," Carroll's wife, Kate, said.

Identical aims
For more than a decade IRA dissidents have been trying to mount attacks in hopes of reversing the results of ongoing political negotiations, which have delivered IRA disarmament in 2005, the rise of the Catholic-Protestant administration in May 2007 and the withdrawal of British troops from security duties two months later.

Analysts and anti-terrorist agencies say the Real IRA and Continuity IRA share identical aims and, despite their competitive rivalry, have cooperated in the past on planning and carrying out attacks.

But Orde said he believed they were operating independently at the moment — and could be motivated by a desire to outdo the other.

"I'm confident that we do not have some concerted effort by one group," he said.

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