Brussels said Tuesday it has temporarily stood down EU officials assisting border checks in two Northern Ireland ports and denied a row over vaccine exports had provoked extremist threats. Northern Irish officials have halted some animal-based food checks that were imposed under the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol in the EU-UK Brexit agreement after an upsurge in threats "in recent weeks". Political controversy over the protocol mounted on Friday when the European Commission briefly proposed and then withdraw a text threatening to invoke the treaty to control vaccine imports from the EU to the UK. But European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said there could be no excuse for threats of violence and insisted that the ugly mood had pre-dated Brussels' mistaken threat to invoke "Article 16" over the vaccine issue. "Whatever the reason was for the threat of violence is simply unacceptable. Full stop. You don't look for excuses. That must be very, very clear," he said. "The second thing is that according to the information we have received, the situation had actually arisen some time ago already. So before the events that you mentioned. So I think it's very clear that the threats have originated before this discussion on Article 16." Mamer said that EU Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic would speak to his UK counterpart Michael Gove and Northern Irish leaders by videoconference on Wednesday to discuss the issue. "Obviously, the security of our staff in Northern Ireland is as high a preoccupation as that of any other person working in Northern Ireland on the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement," she said. "We have asked them not to attend to their duties today, and we will continue to monitor the situation and adapt accordingly." dc/arp/bp