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Date Posted: 21:46:57 06/08/08 Sun GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Obit: Brian Keenan, War to Peace leader in IRA (Chicago Tribune)

www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-keenan_obitmay22,0,2206544.story

chicagotribune.com
Brian Keenan
War to peace, leader in IRA
Once led bombing campaign in England

By Shawn Pogatchnik

Associated Press
May 22, 2008

DUBLIN — Brian Keenan, a commanding figure during the Irish Republican Army's long march from war to peace, died of cancer Wednesday, the Sinn Fein party announced. He was 66.
Mr. Keenan built up the IRA's weapons arsenal in the 1970s, directed its bombing campaign in England and served on the IRA's ruling "army council" for a decade, casting votes to break and call cease-fires in the 1990s.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams lauded Mr. Keenan as a key persuader atop the IRA command who understood the need to move into politics.
Mr. Keenan "was crucial in securing the support of the IRA leadership for the series of historic initiatives which sustained the peace process through its most difficult times," Adams said.
To his death, however, Mr. Keenan sent mixed signals on the IRA's 2005 decisions to disarm and formally abandon a 1970-97 campaign that claimed 1,775 lives. He had been the IRA's most prominent critic of disarmament demands — insisting the move should not happen until the British north was united with the Irish Republic.
In recent weeks the Sinn Fein-IRA newspaper An Phoblacht serialized an interview with Mr. Keenan. He acknowledged that many younger IRA members were unhappy with how the campaign ended, with Sinn Fein helping to lead a new Northern Ireland government alongside leaders of the province's British Protestant majority.
"I would prefer we were somewhere else, but we are not, and that is it as far as I am concerned," Mr. Keenan was quoted as saying. "Revolutionaries have to be pragmatic. Wish lists are for Christmas."



Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

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