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Date Posted: 21:38:43 03/12/05 Sat GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: SF Chief seeking help in US (Hartford Courant)

http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-nireland-us-sinn-fein,0,3753302.story

Sinn Fein Chief Seeking Help in U.S.
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press Writer

March 11 2005, 7:20 PM EST

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams, facing heavy criticism at home over Irish Republican Army activities, unveiled a weeklong trip Friday to the United States to seek support from Irish-American activists.
Adams, a reputed IRA commander since the mid-1970s, said his trip, starting Saturday in Cincinnati, would allow him to tell American supporters about "the grave difficulties" surrounding Northern Ireland's peace process and to seek their support "to get the process back on track."
Adams was banned from visiting the United States until 1994, when President Clinton overturned traditional State Department policy in a successful gambit to encourage an IRA cease-fire that year. Clinton's interest in bringing Sinn Fein into the political mainstream encouraged another IRA cease-fire in 1997 and spurred Sinn Fein to back Northern Ireland's complex Good Friday peace accord of 1998.
But for the first time since 1995, Adams this year will not be permitted to raise funds, visit the White House, or attend official Capitol Hill functions on St. Patrick's Day, the focal point for Irish-American political activity.
The Bush administration did not invite Sinn Fein and other parties to the White House this year. The diplomatic chill reflects growing impatience in London, Dublin and Washington that -- nearly seven years after the Good Friday pact, which envisioned the IRA's total disarmament by 2000 -- the outlawed group is still heavily armed and upsetting the wider peace package.
A painstakingly negotiated deal to revive a Catholic-Protestant administration, the central goal of the 1998 agreement, fell apart in December when the IRA refused Protestant leaders' demand to allow photographs of its disarmament and ignored the Irish government's demand that the outlawed group promise to end its involvement in crime.
Since then it's been all downhill. The IRA has been blamed for mounting the biggest bank robbery in history, when a highly organized gang stole currency worth $50 million from a Belfast bank on Dec. 20; killing a Catholic civilian in a Belfast pub brawl on Jan. 30, then destroying evidence and intimidating witnesses; and laundering millions of dollars annually from illegal rackets.
Raising the temperature higher, the Irish government has accused Adams of sanctioning the bank robbery and has identified him as a current IRA commander. The U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, this week joined joint British-Irish demands for the IRA to disarm fully and disband, and he chided Adams for refusing to accept law and order.
Adams, Sinn Fein and the IRA have rejected most of the charges. But they have been put on the defensive within their own Catholic support base by the case of Robert McCartney, who was beaten and knifed to death by IRA members outside a pub.
The victim's five sisters have waged a public campaign highlighting the intimidation of witnesses, forcing the Sinn Fein-IRA movement to issue a series of unprecedented declarations expelling or suspending 10 members involved.
The IRA, in its latest effort to defuse criticism Tuesday, instead caused widespread outrage when it revealed it was willing to shoot four people identified as responsible.
The McCartney sisters have been invited to the White House and an official Capitol Hill luncheon for St. Patrick's Day.
Adams' schedule released Friday includes appearances at labor union halls in Cincinnati and New York, a breakfast talk at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in New York and a press conference on St. Patrick's Day in Washington.
* __
On the Net:
Sinn Fein: http://www.sinnfein.ie

Copyright 2005 Associated Press

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