WHEN the last funeral cortege and the last sad lament has faded away from Omagh, the words of Robert Burns can still be heard stating the facts of "man's inhumanity to mankind."

In a thirty-year war where casualties have mounted both in the UK and in the province of Northern Ireland, this sickening and barbarous act of murder is just one more meaningless attempt to revive an idea that should have passed away when Eamon de Valera and the republican old guard died.

The so-called 32 County Sovereignty Committee, or Real IRA, are the last desperate throw of people who see their power, money and influence on the way out.

Even Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams realise the truth of this, for even though their hands are not exactly clean, they turned up at one of the funerals and were photographed as prominent mourners among the crowd.

Robert Burns, writing in an age of revolution and republican sentiments, said: "O wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us."

In the sickening aftermath of another terrorist outrage it must be hard for that rump of IRA gangsters, rather than patriots, to look at their own images and not be ashamed.

DUNCAN McVEE, Robin Bank Road, Darwen.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.