BELFAST (Reuters) - Britain`s Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam said on Monday it was too soon to say if the Irish Republican Army (IRA) had broken its ceasefire with the killing of a 22-year-old Catholic man last month. But she made clear she would not hesitate to instigate the expulsion of Sinn Fein, the IRA`s political ally, from the province`s peace process if it had. She promised to rule on the issue within days. "If I have to act - and I have acted in the past - I will do so. I won`t shirk that duty," she told reporters, referring to a previous occasion on which Sinn Fein was expelled from negotiations in the run-up to the signing of the "Good Friday Agreement" in April, 1998. "But equally I`m going to make sure I make a balanced judgement, in the round," she added. Under the provisions of Northern Ireland`s peace process, political parties with links to armed groups can be removed from the province`s peace process if those groups are shown to have violated their ceasefires. Mowlam said she had had preliminary briefings on the execution-style killing of Charles Bennett, an alleged police informer, and on an alleged gun-running operation, developments which she described as "serious". Mowlam, due to

meet police chief Ronnie Flanagan and security advisers later on Monday, said she would consult for a day or two and then take a decision on the accuracy of widespread speculation that the IRA killed Bennett, and whether this meant it had broken its truce. The IRA said in a statement that its leadership had not sanctioned an alleged gun-running operation from the United States to Ireland and that there had been no violation of its ceasefire with the killing of Bennett - though it did not deny the shooting. The IRA fought a 30-year campaign against British rule but it has been blamed for punishment attacks against members of the Catholic community since. The consequences for the peace process could be huge if Mowlam ruled that Sinn Fein should be expelled after years of on-off talks, secret meetings and months of negotiations sponsored by Britain, Ireland and the United States. Mowlam said the peace deal was still very much alive and stressed that the violence in Catholic areas of Londonderry, a response to annual parades by Protestant traditionalists, had been on a smaller scale than in previous years.