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Moving army bases 'is ethnic cleansing'

SITING British army bases far from the border is part of a policy of ethnic cleansing of unionists from republican strongholds, it was claimed yesterday.

DUP Assemblyman Maurice Morrow said there would soon be little to differentiate parts of Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh from the Republic. The UK Ministry of Defence said there were no security installations in those counties for cost reasons - but Lord Morrow said the true motive was political.

The troops in the Army bases had to be put out of the border areas because "there was an assimilation program carried out to make it so you wouldn't know if you are in Northern Ireland or the South."

"Unionists have been intimidated out of their homes and there's been an ethnic cleansing programme which will continue in a different format," the Fermanagh South Tyrone representative said.

"The first visible sign of that is the Army bases being closed. It leaves unionists very vulnerable, feeling unwanted, unwelcome, isolated and marginalised."

Sites including Bessbrook, Co Armagh and Omagh, Co Tyrone, have been closed as part of the Army scaledown to around 5,000 troops for yesterday's end of the 38-year Operation Banner.

At the height of the troubles there were 27,000 troops in the North. SDLP Upper Bann Assembly member Dolores Kelly said Mr Morrow's attitude was "disappointing".

"The DUP have a long way to go in terms of building a shared future or understanding nationalists or republicans and in particular the role of the British Army during the last 38 years," she said.

"It shows an immature attitude towards the realities of a modern army and it is that clinging to the past rather than having confidence in the future that is very disappointing."

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