[Admin-SI]

Adams finds US snub is a bitter pill to swallow

President Bush’s ban on Sinn Fein fundraising forces it to hand back £60,000 donation

IT HAS proved to be a very expensive St Patrick’s Day for Gerry Adams. A ban on fund-raising, imposed as a visa condition for his trip to the US, has forced Sinn Fein to repay $100,000 (£57,000) in ticket sales for a gala breakfast he attended in Washington.

The Sinn Fein president is clearly bitter about what he described as a “partisan” decision by President Bush’s Administration which, he said, took no account of the IRA’s renunciation of armed struggle and the progress made on decommissioning.

“I don’t understand why I’m allowed to go to London for fundraising but not come here,” he told The Times at a subsequent event for the American Ireland Fund.

The US, where up to 45 million people claim Irish descent, has always been regarded as the Republicans’ cash cow and for more than a decade Mr Adams had enjoyed being fêted on his high-profile annual trip to the White House.

But last year he was removed from the invitation list for the President’s shamrock ceremony because Mr Bush was angry over the IRA’s involvement in the Northern Bank robbery and the continued paramilitary violence that led to the murder of Robert McCartney.

This year, the Sinn Fein leader was allowed back into the White House. But he was not asked to a private, more intimate, meeting with Mr Bush. Instead, the President once again chose to spend time with Mr McCartney’s sister, Catherine, and other victims of IRA violence. These included Esther Rafferty whose brother, Joseph, was allegedly murdered last April, and Alan McBride, whose wife was killed in the Shankill bombings a decade ago.

Mr Adams sought to make light of the $100,000 bill for his trip and the frosty reception he had received from the President. “At least I got a free breakfast,” he said. “Look here, Washington comes and Washington goes — but the Irish-Americans have remained constant and they have kept their faith in us.”

But the income that Sinn Fein receives from the Irish-American lobby has fallen to less than $1 million a year. Donations to the respectable and charitable American Ireland Fund dropped by more than a quarter in 2004.

Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary who also travelled to Washington for St Patrick’s Day, believes that the mood — even on “green emotion” days such as this — shifted irrevocably because of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“What has changed is terror and that has changed minds, he said. “Sinn Fein had been treated as heroes on Capitol Hill for years with republicanism intertwined is some minds with the American War of Independence.” Although he did not want to be drawn into the row over Mr Adams’s right to raise money in the US, he suggested that last year’s St Patrick’s Day snub for Sinn Fein had a profound effect.

Mr Hain has held talks with Mr Bush, as well as Mitchell Reiss, the President’s special envoy on Northern Ireland, and Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, over plans due to be unveiled next month for restoring powers to the devolved Stormont Assembly, which was suspended in 2002. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Ulster Unionists still want to delay, he said, while the nationalists “want to jump back in; we need to find a bridge between them”. A proposal for phased reintroduction appears most likely.

“We’re now entering the most important period since the Good Friday agreement in terms of people having to make their minds up,” he said.

But Mr Hain also emphasised that the US remained a central component in the peace process. “Why else do we all come here for St Patrick’s Day? I don’t stay at home, we all go to the US — so does Bertie Ahern.”

Mr Hain pointed out that the influence of the Irish lobby had not dissipated. In this year of mid-term elections “large numbers of congressman and senators still believe the Irish vote is important for them”.

He said: “The bombs and the bullets are no longer going off so perhaps Ireland has slipped off the news agenda a little in America.” But he believes that the love affair is still on, even if it is “more objective” than it was before.

Indeed, John McCain, the front-runner for the next Republican presidential nominations, was addressing a vast, 2,600-plate dinner in New York for the Friendly Sons of St Patrick last night.

Hillary Clinton, the favourite for the Democratic nomination, is one of the first ports of call for British and Irish delegations.

Jim Walsh, a Republican congressman, showed that some of the old ways on the Hill have not disappeared by refusing to sign up to a pledge asking that something be done for the McCartney family.

He said that this would be “poking Sinn Fein in the eye”. Outside the White House, Catherine McCartney expressed her disgust — not least because one of the fatal wounds her brother received had been in the eye.

Along with the Rafferty family, she is considering how to put the spotlight back on to the IRA over the killings, including legal action to prevent Sinn Fein ever raising money in the US.

Asked what she would do if she bumped into Mr Adams inside the White House, Ms Rafferty replied: “I will ask him why he’s protecting the killer of my brother.” While the cameras gathered around them, the Sinn Fein leader slipped into the building, almost unnoticed.




Adams criticises Bush's NI envoy
http://news.bbc.co.u...and/4813758.stm

Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams believes Sinn Fein should be allowed to fundraise
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has strongly criticised US President George Bush's special envoy to NI.

Speaking in Washington, Mr Adams said: "I don't have high regards for Mitchell Reiss's input into this process."

"If it is he who is advising the president, it's very very bad advice," he added.

However, Mr Reiss has dismissed the criticism from the Sinn Fein president. "I reject that accusation, that allegation," he said.

Mr Adams is angry that the US government has refused him permission to fundraise, and said it was wrong to treat Sinn Fein differently.

He was speaking as he arrived at a Friends of Sinn Fein gala breakfast on Thursday.

The party has been forced to refund donations that were to be made at the event at Washington's Capitol Hilton hotel.

Mr Reiss said: "We try very hard to be an honest broker. I think if you look at the record, it demonstrates quite clearly that we don't play favourites - that we call it as we see it.

"We try to keep our eye on the main objective here - which is moving the peace process forward and keeping the focus on the people of Northern Ireland."

'Work together'

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, who is also in Washington, said the "clock is ticking" for the suspended assembly.

"There are some hard choices going to be faced by all the politicians this year because there needs to be a moment of decision made," he said.

"We can't continue with this state of political paralysis and impasse that we've had for far too long, with an assembly that hasn't met for nearly four years and with the whole cost from the taxpayer pouring in to fund that institution and its members."

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said: "The issue now is are people prepared to work together in an assembly, and work together as the Good Friday Agreement set out.

"I think we're going to find that out in the months immediately ahead."

Meanwhile, SDLP leader Mark Durkan rejected earlier Sinn Fein claims that the US government has become biased in its handling of the peace process.

Mark Durkan
Mark Durkan is in Washington for the Saint Patrick's Day celebrations
Speaking in Washington, Mr Durkan said Mr Adams was wrong to criticise the Bush administration as partisan.

He said the US had been critical of unionist politicians for their stance on the violence that erupted last year over the Whiterock parade

Speaking in New York before travelling to Washington for Saint Patrick's Day this Friday, Mr Adams said he was bewildered and surprised that the US government would not allow Sinn Fein to fundraise when the IRA had put all of its weapons beyond use.

Mr Durkan said he felt Mr Reiss had "done a good job in calling things straight on the need for a lawful society".
Mr Adams' comments also took some US politicians by surprise.