Stevens report to confirm collusion - report

Speculation is mounting over the impending publication of the
Stevens police report on collusion between British Crown forces
and unionist paramilitaries in acts of terror against the
Catholic community in the North of Ireland in the 1980s and
1990s.

The latest reports, originating in the right-wing London
Telegraph, claim that the British police team led by John Stevens
has concluded that such collusion was indeed an official policy
of the British Army and the RUC police, but not the official
policy of the British government.

A constant stresam of leaks are seen as an attempt to prepare
British public opinion for the revealtions on the state-sponsored
killings.

The level of official government approval for such actions --
including the assassination of political figures, bomb attacks,
and random murders of Catholics -- remains a highly controversial
factor in an investigation that has been physically and
politically sabotaged at different levels over the past thirteen
years.

Relatives of the victims of the British state killings -- such as
the cold-blooded slaying of human rights defence lawyer Pat
Finucane in 1989 and many others -- will never accept anything
less than a full public inquiry.

According to the reports, Stevens's team is recommending a series
of criminal charges, including conspiracy to murder, against 23
members of the British Army and RUC/PSNI police. April 17 is the
report's publication date, according to the Telegraph.

Sinn Fein's Mid-Ulster MP martin McGuinness was asked about the
speculation over the weekend. He said some of the information
that had emerged had huge implications for all of the work in the
peace process, in particular terms of trying to get an
acceptable, representative police service.

"We await with interest, as I am sure most people in our
community do, further contributions from Stevens, while having a
healthy degree of scepticism of the willingness of the British
establishment to face up to the arguments that we have been
making for many years -- that there was collusion," he said.