ULSTER Unionists claimed yesterday that allegations of a reactivated IRA should justify excluding Sinn Fein from Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) threatened to tear up the key clause of the Good Friday Agreement over claims that former IRA members murdered dissident republican Kevin McGuigan two weeks ago.

Its announcement followed the Ulster Unionist Party’s threat on Wednesday to quit the Stormont executive over the issue.

DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said his party would push for Sinn Fein to be thrown out of the coalition administration if the republican party did not deal with the accusations “very speedily.”

He led a party delegation to meet the British government’s Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers in Belfast yesterday to discuss the political crisis sparked by the shooting and an “assessment” by Northern Ireland’s police chief George Hamilton that the IRA is still active and some of its members were involved in the killing.

After the meeting at Stormont House, Mr Dodds said: “On the basis of what we know already there is sufficient basis on what the chief constable is saying about IRA members being involved in violence and murder and that IRA organisation exists for an exclusion motion to be put down.”

He said that if Sinn Fein did not act, it should be excluded, failing which the DUP would bring down the administration.

The republican SDLP and the cross-community Alliance Party also met Ms Villiers but they did not back the DUP’s position.

SDLP leader Alasdair McDonnell said his party would not make a “knee-jerk” decision until they had more proof.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said on Wednesday: “Unionist politicians ignored the bits that didn’t fit with their narrative and jumped on Hamilton’s claim that the IRA still exists to ratchet up the crisis.

“The war is over and the IRA is gone and is not coming back.”

Communist Party of Ireland chair Lynda Walker said: “This is pure electoral opportunism by the DUP and the UUP.

“It would be a bad affair for the peace process if Stormont collapses. There are no winners if we go back to violence.”