BELFAST, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Britain's government has ruled out an inquiry into the 1989 murder of a Northern Ireland lawyer, prompting his widow to walk out of a meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday.
Pro-British paramilitaries shot Pat Finucane 14 times in front of his wife and three children at his Belfast home. A Canadian judge recommended in 2003 an inquiry into whether the British security forces colluded in his murder.
Finucane had represented members of guerrilla group the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which fought a bloody campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland.
"I'm so angry I can barely speak," Finucane's widow, Geraldine, told reporters after cutting short her meeting with Cameron.
The British prime minister told her he would have a top lawyer, known as Queen's Counsel (QC), review all the official files and papers relating to the case over an 18 month period.
"I am so angry and so insulted at being brought to Downing Street today to hear what the Prime Minister has to offer. He wants a QC to read the papers in my husband's case and that is how he expects to reach the truth," she said.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had agreed to hold a public inquiry into the murder, one of the most controversial in 30 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, but it was never set up, in part because the Finucane family did not agree on the terms.
Cameron is mindful of the 200 million pound cost of the public inquiry into Bloody Sunday - the shooting dead of 13 civil rights marchers in Londonderry in 1972 by soldiers of the Parachute Regiment - and has made clear he cannot justify such expense again during a period of financial cutbacks.
In the Irish parliament, Prime Minister Enda Kenny said he was also disappointed with Cameron's response.
"If Geraldine Finucane was not happy with what was on offer then clearly we would not be happy either," he said. (Reporting by Ian Graham; editing by Carmel Crimmins)
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