THE IRA will come under renewed pressure to disarm this week when politicians from Belfast and Dublin fly to the United States to mark St Patrick’s Day.

They will be joined by Hugh Orde, Chief Constable of the new Police Service of Northern Ireland. He is the first police chief to attend.

The centrepiece reception at the White House will take place on Thursday, four days before the Irish patron saint’s day on March 17 — a move, diplomatic sources said, that reflected the way in which a possible war with Iraq had overshadowed the issue of Northern Ireland.

In a speech, President Bush is expected to urge the IRA to renounce all forms of paramilitary activity. Officials in Washington said that he was unlikely to hold a special meeting with Sinn Fein leaders, including Gerry Adams, unless the IRA made a prior gesture of conciliation.

The programme of the Sinn Fein delegation will be organised by one of the 30-40 fugitives that Sinn Fein is demanding be allowed to return to Northern Ireland under a new peace deal. Rita O’Hare, 58, the organisation’s publicity director in the United States, is wanted in Northern Ireland for absconding while on bail 28 years ago. She faces charges arising from a gun attack on soldiers alleged to have been lured by her into an ambush.

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, said yesterday that no progress had been made on the question of sanctions being taken against political parties re-entering a power-sharing administration at Stormont. His party is insisting that parties should face sanctions if groups with which they are associated flout the terms of the Good Friday agreement.

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