WHEN THE FLAME of peace comes to Northern Ireland this summer, police will face an Olympic task to ensure that IRA die-hards don’t try to blow it out.

The Olympic Torch will spend five June days traveling through 67 cities, towns and villages throughout the province. It crosses the border to the south on 6 June.

The flame’s course should offer a poignant measure of how far Northern Ireland has traveled down its own road to reconciliation.

IRA dissidents are committed to shattering that image and, experts agree, are bound to see the Olympics as an unprecedented opportunity to advertise their defiant existence.

“I’d be very surprised if the dissidents don’t try something during the Olympics. Putting a small bomb anywhere near an Olympic venue would put them on every front page in the world,” said Richard English, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

English said leaders of today’s three main IRA splinter groups are desperate to be taken seriously in an age when Northern Ireland peacemaking is seen worldwide as a triumph following the 2005 demise of the long-dominant IRA faction, the Provisionals. He said the Olympic torch will present the first, easiest target.

“Anything in Ireland is easier for the dissidents to hit. And the torch is a target that just carries on and on and on, its course choreographed far in advance. So it’s a nightmare logistically for the police,” he said.

A security think tank offering advice to British companies for the Olympics, the SIRS Consultancy, says the Olympic flame’s 3-7 June procession through the island has been recklessly timed. The Northern Ireland leg will coincide with celebrations marking the Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II’s ascent to the throne.

“Whilst it is of course essential to involve Northern Ireland in the UK’s Olympic Games,” SIRS said in a statement, “routing the torch procession though the most insecure areas of the country during the queen’s Diamond Jubilee presents a needless security risk.”

IRA experts say disrupting the torch’s Irish travels could well be an opening act. They say police must be braced for the dissidents to attempt to plant at least one bomb in England — where no IRA faction has exploded a device since before the 9/11 attacks — at some point during the 27 July-12 August London Olympics, chiefly because tens of thousands of foreign journalists will be there.

‘They’re mad and bad enough’

Tom Clonan, a security analyst and former Irish army captain, said IRA dissidents would see an Olympics-linked attack as a powerful way to embarrass Britain.

“The dissidents have already demonstrated they’re mad and bad enough to want to target Britain,” Clonan said. “If they end up doing nothing during the Olympics, or just phoning in threats with nothing real behind them, it would show that they’re being surveilled within an inch of their life.”

The UK’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre in London currently rates the likelihood of an attack in Britain by IRA splinter groups or al-Qaida both as “substantial,” meaning an attack from either source is a strong possibility. It puts the risk of dissident IRA attacks in Northern Ireland at the higher level of “severe,” meaning highly likely.

An Irish anti-terrorist officer said two Oglaigh na hEireann operatives were trailed from the Irish border to London in early 2011, where they met supporters and saw several Olympics-connected sites as tourists.

The officer, who spoke to the AP on condition he not be identified because he wasn’t authorised to speak to the media, said it was not clear if the dissidents were scouting Olympics sites, because their trip also preceded the April 2011 royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The officer said the two men remain under surveillance back home.

The experts are unanimous on one key point: If any dissident IRA group does plant a bomb near the torch route or an Olympic facility, it will be to generate panic and headlines, not civilian deaths. That means the use of telephoned warnings using recognised code words.

But bitter experience shows that phone calls don’t always work.  The homemade bombs by dissident IRA groups also are often flawed. Many are duds and some explode sooner than intended.

“The dissidents aren’t in the business of planting no-warning bombs against civilian targets,” said English, contrasting their behavior with that of al-Qaida militants. “But the worrying fact is, they are not as technically able as the Provisionals were. And that incompetence can make you more lethal.”

Shawn Pogatchnik, AP

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