The leadership of the INLA send revolutionary greetings to our volunteers, comrades and supporters throughout the world. We express our solidarity with anti-imperialist movements worldwide, especially those struggling for a secular socialist society.

We reaffirm our cease-fire decision of August 22nd 1998 but view with increasing concern the escalating attacks on the nationalist working class by hate filled loyalism. We warn that such attacks put an almost impossible strain on republicans. Unless there is a halt then a republican response is inevitable.

We commend the restraint that our volunteers, particularly in north Belfast, have shown over the last year. They have not been found wanting in defending working class communities. The disciplined and controlled response to provocative and murderous attacks is to be commended.

We condemn the poor leadership within unionism for allowing the Protestant working class to be marginalised by the political process. The rampant sectarian hatred manifested in the attacks on school children is a monument to the gutless leadership within unionism. We call on community activists and trade unionists within the Protestant working class to mobilise within that constituency and seize the political leadership from the drug selling loyalists of the UDA.

We reiterate our support for political status for republican POW's and demand the release of Dessie O Hare by the free state establishment. He is entitled to be released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

We condemn the continuing slurs by a small group of journalists linking the INLA to drug dealing. Recycling the same false stories on an ongoing basis only shows the inability of these hacks to carry out investigative journalism. They have never contacted this movement or its political representatives to test the accuracy of their slurs. The INLA is not involved in any way with the drug trade.