Newly released British government papers show serious disagreement between London and Dublin over the exclusion of Sinn Féin from political talks because of a number of IRA murders in February 1998 - just two months before the Good Friday Agreement.
An IRA cover organisation, Direct Action Against Drugs, was blamed for shooting an alleged drug dealer, Brendan Campbell, while members of the IRA were suspected of shooting leading Loyalist Robert Dougan.
As a result, British Prime Minister Tony Blair believed Sinn Féin would have to be excluded from the all-party talks for a period.
Mr Blair told US President Bill Clinton that they had asked Sinn Féin to condemn the killings, but all they would say was that the ceasefire was intact.
When Northern Secretary Mo Mowlam raised the issue with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, his response was 'prove it'. President Clinton "agreed that what Sinn Féin and the IRA had said so far was bullshit".
Dublin reluctantly went along with the decision to exclude Sinn Féin, but wanted to set a - firm and early - date for their return. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern argued there was a danger of "delivering Sinn Féin up to the mercy of unreconstructed militaristic critics in the Republican Movement".
Mr Blair insisted that the evidence of IRA involvement "was, unfortunately, overwhelming. He and Dr Mowlam had both looked hard and would have loved to find holes in it. They could not. The Taoiseach concluded that there was no choice but to get on with the process".
But two days later, with public opinion strongly against a lengthy expulsion, he was arguing for an early date to be set for Sinn Féin’s readmission - and he made a startling accusation, telling Mr Blair that "his colleagues did not trust the RUC. His intelligence advisers believed that we [i.e. the British] had a mole in the IRA who had been involved directly in setting up the operation and had then fingered those concerned. This man was now safely across the water in Britain".
The Prime Minister replied that he had never heard of any such thing. He added that Sinn Féin could not stay in the process when the IRA had committed two murders, when the loyalist party the UDP had been excluded in similar circumstances.
The Taoiseach said he agreed in principle, "but the public distinguished in practice between the drug dealer and a Loyalist leader on the one hand and innocent Catholics on the other. He found the same public reaction in Ireland to the deaths of criminals at the hands of other criminals".
It was eventually agreed that Sinn Féin could return to the talks a couple of weeks after their exclusion.
At a subsequent meeting in Downing Street, the Taoiseach said he was more worried about dissident republicans in the 32 County Sovereignty Committee (who would later be involved in the Omagh Bombing). He described the organisation’s leader Michael McKevitt as "an able man who was doing his best to destabilise Adams and McGuinness. He was working very hard in both south and north…".
Mr Ahern also said the Irish had been "a bit bemused that warnings they had given the RUC via the Garda about three likely Continuity IRA bombs did not seem to have been fully followed up".
A car carrying a bomb had not been tracked across the border, and despite the warnings from Dublin, a car with southern number plates parked outside an RUC station in Moira had not been noticed.
More on the latest UK state paper release:
