By Toby Harnden

                                  The intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic
                                  are still assessing what the IRA received for
                                  assisting Farc and how its activities in Colombia fit
                                  into the global terrorist network.

                                  Although the IRA received money drawn from Farc's
                                  narco-trafficking, it is not believed the Provisionals
                                  were paid in drugs.

                                  The Farc is an unlikely source of the type of
                                  handguns and .50 calibre weapons the IRA is known
                                  to want, but the money from Colombia was probably
                                  used to fund arms deals elsewhere.

                                  Claims by the driver of Fabian Ramirez, a Farc
                                  leader, that he helped unload boxes of missiles from
                                  a private plane in 2000 suggest a joint IRA-Farc
                                  arms deal with terrorists in Nicaragua.

                                  A glance at the false passport of Niall Connolly, Sinn
                                  Fein's former representative in Cuba and allegedly
                                  the IRA's link man in Latin America, gives clues to
                                  what the Irish republican movement might have
                                  been up to.

                                  Using a false passport issued in 1994 in the name of
                                  David Bracken, who had died as a baby in 1966,
                                  Connolly travelled frequently to Venezuela - a
                                  country often used to enter Colombia - Panama,
                                  Nicaragua and El Salvador, all of which are potential
                                  sources of weapons.

                                  Connolly also used a false passport in the name of
                                  Ralph McKay. Intelligence information supplied by
                                  the Irish to the Colombians said Connolly was in
                                  Cuba at the start of the 1990s "acting as a liaison
                                  between the IRA and Latin American movements". In
                                  early 2001 he was found trying to get another false
                                  passport in Dublin.

                                  There are also strong circumstantial links between
                                  the Colombia Three and the Florida Three - Conor
                                  Claxton, Anthony Smyth and Martin Mullan, who
                                  were convicted of gun-running for the IRA.

                                  Smyth was a Spanish speaker who had lived in
                                  Venezuela for 11 years while one of Claxton's
                                  girlfriends was Idoia Elorriaga, a Basque activist and
                                  member of Heri Batasuna, ETA's political wing, who
                                  travelled frequently to Cuba.