Police arrest 'IRA spy' in Trimble's office

The Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, said yesterday that "absolutely massive repercussions" could flow from reports that an IRA spy operated in his office while he was Northern Ireland's First Minister.

His issued his warning after a civil servant who had worked as his diary secretary was arrested by police investigating IRA intelligence-gathering in political circles.

It has already emerged that the Northern Ireland Office had been penetrated by the IRA, but the suspicion that the organisation also had agents in the offices of other major political parties generated fresh shock.

The civil servant who is being held for interrogation is a Catholic man in his twenties and from the Catholic Andersonstown district of west Belfast. Sinn Fein denounced the arrest as a "McCarthy-style witch-hunt".

The man under arrest worked for three months as Mr Trimble's diary secretary, and for a further six months in the same role for Mark Durkan, leader of the nationalist SDLP, while he was Deputy First Minister. Diary secretaries work closely with ministers in their private offices to handle appointments. When arrested on Wednesday the man was working in the office of the British minister Ian Pearson, who has taken over some of the functions of the suspended Northern Ireland Executive.

The Stormont government was mothballed last month after Unionist ministers said they would walk out of office because of the initial espionage revelations. The arrest is a serious setback to the Government's ambition of bringing about an early restoration of the devolved administration.