MCGRADY DECLARES WAR ON DRUGS

South Down MP Eddie McGrady has called for an "all-out war" against
paramilitary "parasites" engaged in Northern Ireland's illegal drugs trade.

Mr McGrady told the Commons that, as society moved "painfully and slowly"
towards peace and normality, there had been an enormous rise in drugs
trafficking.

It had "penetrated our communities and led to beatings, petrol bombings and
shootings".

He urged Peter Mandelson: "Will you urgently examine that new cancer in our
society, which is often promoted by erstwhile or so-called erstwhile
paramilitaries, review the resources that he and the police have at their
disposal, enhance those resources and start an all-out war on those
parasites in our society, who are destroying our young people?"

The Secretary of State responded: "It is true that the spread of drugs,
their supply, their use and their sale, behind which stand many members of
paramilitary organisations, is now at the heart of the programme of
activities by the RUC.

"Wherever I go in Northern Ireland, the story is the same: the cancer is
spreading into every community."

He pledged that the RUC would use "every resource" at its disposal to combat
the drugs problem.

UK Unionist Robert McCartney later intervened to say that Mr McGrady had
raised the "important issue" of mafia-like activities in drugs, extortion
and other criminal acts.

He asked Mr Mandelson: "Can you confirm that the paramilitaries involved are
largely the good terrorists who support the peace process, not the wicked,
dissident terrorists who are allegedly disrupting London?"

Mr Mandelson replied: "Unlike you, I do not distinguish between good
terrorists and bad terrorists.

"To me, all terrorists are bad and equally unacceptable. If there is any
evidence that will bring them, individually or collectively, to book, it
will be acted on decisively."