SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press

DUBLIN, Ireland - Ireland's government and Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party, denied Saturday they had struck a secret deal to permit three fugitives from Colombia to return home.

The three IRA-linked men, convicted eight months ago in Colombia of training the South American country's largest rebel group, resurfaced unexpectedly in Ireland on Friday when one gave an interview to Irish television.

Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said his government had no advance warning that the trio - in hiding since fleeing Colombia to avoid 17-year prison sentences - were back on Irish soil.

Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and Jim Monaghan reappeared eight days after the IRA pledged to make its 1997 cease-fire permanent and to resume disarmament - a commitment that Britain and Ireland had been pressing Sinn Fein for years to deliver.

Politicians in both parts of Ireland, particularly leaders of the north's British Protestant majority, have accused the Irish government of using the three as a secret bargaining chip to spur the IRA peace move. But Ahern dismissed those suspicions as "untrue and unhelpful."

Ahern said the trio's arrest in August 2001 while trying to leave Colombia on false passports had complicated Northern Ireland's peace process at the time, "and their return creates an enormous amount of difficulties in the peace process now."

A senior Sinn Fein official, Pat Doherty, speaking after a Dublin meeting of the party's executive committee, said there was "no deal to bring them home. It was not part of any negotiation."

Doherty rejected Protestant calls for the men to be sent back to Colombia. "It is a nonsense to suggest," he said, "that the peace process is somehow in crisis as a result of their return."

Colombia's vice president, Francisco Santos, on Friday appealed to Ireland to extradite all three men. "Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern must demonstrate his country's commitment to the global fight against terrorism," Santos said.

But Ahern said extradition probably would be difficult, given Ireland's lack of an extradition treaty with Colombia. He added that Ireland had not yet received a formal extradition request from Colombia.

Colombian authorities, however, insisted Saturday that the lack of an extradition treaty should not prevent the three men from being handed over to serve out their prison sentence in Colombia.

"International mechanisms do exist that enable us to issue an (extradition) request," said Attorney General Mario Iguaran.

Iguaran said his office was studying the best options open to Colombia, but declined to provide further details.

Earlier, one of Ahern's Cabinet members, Noel Dempsey, said the decision on extradition would be up to the courts and Ireland's national police force.

"The government will not harbor any terrorists. But you can't just disregard Irish people's rights," Dempsey said.

Dempsey said he did not think Irish detectives had yet found Connolly, McCauley and Monaghan.

The trio's return to Ireland was revealed when Monaghan gave an interview to Irish state broadcasters RTE. In the interview, Monaghan - an IRA veteran whose normally silver-colored hair had been dyed red - said many people in many countries had helped them travel from Colombia back to Ireland.