Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and his deputy Martin McGuinness, and Ferris, a Sinn Fein MP of the Irish parliament, were members of the IRA's seven-member army council, Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell said on the Irish national radio program Ireland Sunday.

Sharing McDowell's view, Irish Defense Minister Wkllie O' Dea described Sinn Fein and the IRA as being two sides of the same coin. "We can no longer turn a blind eye to criminality and the close links between Sinn Fein and the IRA," he said.

However, the allegation was denied by Sinn Fein. "No republican worthy of the name can be involved in criminality. If any are, they should be expelled from our ranks. We are not involved in criminality and we will not tolerate such behavior," Gerry Adams told a Sunday gathering in Strabane, a Catholic border town of Northern Ireland.

Until Sunday, both Irish and British governments had declined to identify Adams and his deputy McGuinness as members of IRA's army command.

The latest development came as Sinn Fein, known as IRA's political wing, is under increasing pressure for its alleged involvement in a Belfast bank robbery of £ 26.5 million (US$50 million) last December and a subsequent wide money-laundering campaign.

In a series of police raids all over Ireland following the December heist, police have seized more than £ 2.5 million (US$4.6 million) and arrested seven men and a woman, of whom seven were later released.

Earlier this month, both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern called on the IRA to give up all criminal activity to allow a return of power-sharing between Catholic Irish nationalists and pro-British Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland.

(Xinhua News Agency February 21, 2005)