[Mb-civic] Sinn Fein Struggles to Defuse IRA Crisis

[Cheeseburger]

Sinn Fein Struggles to Defuse IRA Crisis

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-ireland-sinn-fein,0,1947000.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines


DUBLIN, Ireland -- Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party under
fire over the IRA's killing of a Belfast man and other crimes, invited the
victim's sisters into its party conference Saturday in an unprecedented
effort to defuse their criticism.

As four sisters of Robert McCartney sat in the front row, Sinn Fein leader
Gerry Adams said McCartney's killers -- among them, allegedly, seven
suspended members of Sinn Fein and three expelled members of the outlawed
IRA -- "should admit what they did in a court of law. That's the only decent
thing for them to do."

During his speech at Sinn Fein's largest annual gathering, Adams offered
sympathy but no new commitments to the McCartneys, whose high-profile
campaign over the past month has highlighted IRA intimidation of witnesses
to the Jan. 30 attack on their brother.

Adams said he wanted to assure the family, as well as the man's fiancee and
two young children who didn't attend, "that we are on their side."

The four sisters listened with grim expressions.

Adams -- whom the Irish government identified last month as an IRA
commander -- said witnesses should "come forward." He did not specify they
should talk to the Northern Ireland detectives trying to gather evidence on
the mob that fatally knifed and beat McCartney, 33, outside a Belfast pub.

The McCartneys left the conference saying they were not yet satisfied. They
noted that none of 72 potential witnesses has given police statements
identifying the attackers, whose names are common knowledge in the
McCartneys' Belfast neighborhood of Short Strand, a traditional IRA power
base.

"These men murdered my brother. Everyone knows who they are," said Catherine
McCartney.

The McCartney case has highlighted a major obstacle in the peace process -- 
whether Catholics will cooperate with the mostly Protestant police force in
Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein rejects current efforts to reform the police,
while the IRA reserves the right to kill anybody who tells police about IRA
activities.

Such policies were supposed to have ended by now in support of Northern
Ireland's Good Friday peace accord of 1998, which proposed a joint
administration of Protestants and Sinn Fein, which has grown to become the
biggest Catholic-backed party in the British territory.

Protestants say they won't cooperate again with Sinn Fein until the IRA
disarms and disbands. They cite both the McCartney killing and the Dec. 20
robbery of a Belfast bank -- when the IRA allegedly stole a world-record $50
million -- as the worst recent examples.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, whose moderate Protestant party formed
a power-sharing administration involving Sinn Fein that collapsed in 2002,
told his own party conference Saturday in Belfast that Sinn Fein must become
"a purely peaceful, democratic movement with no private army." He ruled out
renewed negotiations until that happened.

In his speech, Adams qualified the IRA's right to commit crimes and said the
group could not be "wished away, or ridiculed or embarrassed or demonized or
repressed out of existence."

"We know that breaking the law is a crime," Adams said. "But we refuse to
criminalize those who break the law in pursuit of legitimate political
objectives."

Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern, speaking before Adams' speech, said
Sinn Fein and the IRA were "one organization" and emphasized that any new
negotiations involving Sinn Fein would focus on the need to secure the IRA's
disarmament and disbandment.

Ahern said the McCartney case illustrated that the IRA, once viewed as
protectors in the most hard-line Catholic parts of Northern Ireland, now
must "get off the backs of local communities" as peaceful times have
arrived.

In one sign of the unusual political isolation facing Sinn Fein, no members
of the U.S. Congress attended the conference for the first time in more than
a decade. The main international guests instead came from South Africa's
African National Congress, the Palestinian Authority and Basque separatists
from Spain.

The Bush administration confirmed Thursday that Sinn Fein, as well as other
Northern Ireland parties, would not be invited to the White House for St.
Patrick's Day for the first time since 1995.

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CheeseNote:  While I do not condone any of the killing etc there (or
anywhere) by anyone, I wouldn't feel too bad about not being able to wear a
green hat and drink champagne with people who have just finished killing
much more people than both the Protestants and the Catholics etc in Northern
Ireland have ever combined;  namely 100,000 dead Iraqi civilian men women
and children remains the latest body count of innocents in Iraq buried under
the ground there.

Wearing a green hat in the White House (which is most likely called that
because nobody can take up residency there unless they are a millionaire
white boy) and only being afforded the privilege of drinking green champagne
with mass murderers once every 12 years isn't so bad a punishment.  By the
time the next opportunity comes around, you will have all probably solved
all your problems up there in Northern Ireland and then you can drink
yourselves silly with our friendly Fascismos we keep on retainer with our
hard-earned taxes here under the table in the oval office to your heart's
content.

Oh well, you can always stop by here on that holiday and I'll put some green
food dye in the ice tea and we can watch the grass grow and pretend the fire
ants are a parade.  All in all though, it seems so profoundly ironic that
people like the IRA will probably actually reform and be drawn back into the
mainstream of "polite society" and non-murderers long before our own
Government here in America will get around to it themselves, if ever.

Funny stuff when you think about it.    :|

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