Belfast, Northern Ireland ? In its bluntest criticism yet of the Irish Republican Army, the Bush administration told the IRA it should disband after the outlawed group’s offer to shoot four men, including two recently expelled members, responsible for killing a Catholic civilian.

Wednesday’s call from the U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, came a week ahead of St. Patrick’s Day when, for the first time in a decade, leaders of the IRA’s Sinn Fein party won’t be guests of the White House.

This year, the invitations are going elsewhere — to the five sisters of the IRA’s most recent victim, Robert McCartney, a 33-year-old forklift operator and nightclub bouncer.

“It’s time for the IRA to go out of business. And it’s time for Sinn Fein to be able to say that explicitly, without ambiguity, without ambivalence, that criminality will not be tolerated,” Reiss said.

He particularly questioned Sinn Fein’s claim that most IRA activities — including robbing banks and shooting petty criminals in the limbs — shouldn’t be considered crimes. He said Sinn Fein should begin cooperating with the Northern Ireland police, a mostly Protestant force that once suffered heavily from IRA attacks, and today is being substantially reshaped with support from moderate Catholics.

McCartney was killed Jan. 30 after an IRA-led gang slashed one of his friends inside a Belfast pub, then attacked both men outside, clubbing McCartney with iron bars and knifing him in the neck and stomach. By most accounts, the fight started after McCartney’s friend made a crude comment to a table headed by a senior IRA figure who thundered: “Do you know who I am?”