WASHINGTON, March 15 (UPI) -- Nobel winner David Trimble reminded American politicians Monday not to treat Northern Ireland's terrorists with sentimentality.
"Whoever the culprits of the bombing in Madrid are, they owe their effectiveness to the terrorists in Ireland," Trimble, a member of the British Parliament and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, told an audience at the Heritage Foundation. Trimble highlighted ties between Spain's Basque separatist group ETA and Ireland's Irish Republican Army as an indication the issue of terror in Northern Ireland is not confined to Northern Ireland.
Trimble noted the use of mobile phones for detonating bombs, as used by the terrorists in last Thursday's bombings in Madrid, is a mechanism also used in terrorist acts in Northern Ireland.
"The exchange of information between the IRA and other terrorist groups has been there a long time," Trimble said. Trimble said the IRA has had ties to militant Palestinian groups since the 1970s and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi once supplied the IRA with weapons.
