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Date Posted: 23:51:53 02/26/05 Sat GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: SF punished in wake of bank heist (Hartford Courant)

Sinn Fein Punished in Wake of Bank Heist
By ROBERT BARR
Associated Press Writer

February 22 2005, 2:55 PM EST

LONDON -- Britain will impose financial penalties worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party, for the IRA's alleged robbery of a Belfast bank and other crimes in Northern Ireland, the government said Tuesday.
Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy said Sinn Fein's four elected members of the House of Commons -- who have refused to take their seats -- would lose their right to claim expenses, a benefit worth more than $750,000 annually.
The penalties must be approved by Parliament, where some members want even stronger action and urged the government to give up on ever including Sinn Fein in a power-sharing government for Northern Ireland envisioned by the 1998 Good Friday peace accord.
"The reality today is that the kind of inclusive power-sharing devolution envisaged in the Belfast Agreement is no longer, sadly, practical politics until the republican movement has clearly and permanently put an end to its involvement in crime and its paramilitary structure," said David Lidington, the opposition Conservative spokesman on Northern Ireland.
Leaders of Northern Ireland's British Protestant majority called for more stern action.
"The time has surely come for this government and this house to set its own affairs in order, and to say that there is no place in this democracy for armed terrorists and for their campaign of crime against the decent citizens of Northern Ireland," said Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley, who called for Sinn Fein's exclusion from both House of Commons facilities and from the moribund Northern Ireland Assembly.
Punishment of Sinn Fein was recommended last month by the Independent Monitoring Commission, an expert panel that blamed the IRA for a bank robbery worth $50 million from Northern Bank, the biggest cash theft in history; the hijacking of two tobacco shipments; and the ransacking of Northern Ireland's largest wholesale warehouse. The IRA has denied all the accusations.
Murphy also confirmed that Britain would continue to withhold a development grant from Sinn Fein worth about $230,000 annually. Britain withdrew that benefit in April after an earlier commission report blamed the IRA for violent and illegal activities, including kidnapping, smuggling fuel and cigarettes, and breaking the limbs of criminal rivals.
Cutting off expense money is "designed to express the disapproval of all those who are committed to purely democratic politics at the actions of the Provisional IRA," Murphy said, using the outlawed group's full name.
However, Murphy said the four Sinn Fein members of the Commons -- including party leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness -- will not lose their Parliament offices or their access to other meeting rooms for news conferences.
Murphy said Britain would continue to negotiate with Sinn Fein, but stressed that Northern Ireland power-sharing involving the Catholic-backed party would not return until the IRA fully disarmed and effectively disbanded.
A power-sharing coalition collapsed in October 2002 after suffering repeated breakdowns and arguments over IRA activities. A painstakingly negotiated deal to revive power-sharing fell apart in December after the IRA refused to permit photos of its disarmament or to renounce all criminal activities. The bank raid followed Dec. 20.
One lawmaker from Northern Ireland dissented from the government's proposed sanctions.
"The IRA and Sinn Fein thrive on victimhood and grievances," said Seamus Mallon of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, which vies with Sinn Fein for Catholic votes. "This House should not facilitate them by handing them any more."
* __
On the Net:
Murphy statement, http://www.nio.gov.uk/media-detail.htm?newsID10934

Copyright 2005 Associated Press
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