BELFAST, Northern Ireland — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown vowed today that Irish Republican Army dissidents responsible for killing two soldiers will not be permitted to escape justice or undermine the Catholic-Protestant government at the heart of the peace process.

Brown paid a visit to the army barracks west of Belfast where the Real IRA splinter group gunned down two soldiers, and wounded two other soldiers and two pizza deliverymen, on Saturday. Then he met Northern Ireland's police chief and the senior figures in the power-sharing government.

Brown said the two gunmen and their getaway driver "have got to be hunted down and brought to justice as quickly as possible."

"What the people of Northern Ireland are building together ... no one, no murderer, no terrorist should be allowed to destroy," he said.

The British premier insisted that the Real IRA had mounted its attack in a desperate, last-ditch bid to keep the 22-month-old coalition of British Protestants and Irish Catholics from taking root. The dissidents were already too late, he said.

"This attack has not happened because of the failure of the political process. It's in many ways because of the success of the political process, that people are working together and a small number of people want to disrupt something that is working — something that is showing the whole world that Northern Ireland stands together," he said.