Terrorist link prompts President Bush to snub Ultra Irish Adams

By Toby Harnden in Washington

(Filed: 06/03/2003)

Gerry Adams, the ultra Irish Sinn Fein leader, will not be permitted to shake hands with President George W Bush or visit the Oval Office during next week's St Patrick's Day celebrations at the White House. The decision was taken after the Farc, a Colombian narco-terrorist group, used its training from the Provisional IRA to launch a campaign of urban bombing and began to target Americans. A defence contractor working for the US Army was murdered and three more taken hostage by the Farc last month after their single engine Cessna plane crashed in the jungle 200 miles south of Bogota. The Bush administration now considers combating the Farc to be a part of the war against terrorism, a shift in strategy that by extension makes the IRA and Mr Adams designated enemies of the United States.

Although the failure of the Northern Ireland parties to reach a deal on restoring devolved government will be publicly cited as the justification, a key reason for freezing out Mr Adams is the IRA's links with the Farc. Last year, Mr Adams was among a group of five party leaders photographed with Mr Bush in the Oval Office along with Bertie Ahern, the Irish premier, and John Reid, then Northern Ireland Secretary. This year, there will be no photograph and no contact between Mr Adams and Mr Bush. "That's my understanding of how it's been set up," said Pat Kelly, spokesman for the Irish Embassy in Washington. "The White House basically envisaged it only if a deal could be done." Three alleged IRA members, including James Monaghan, an explosives expert who was photographed beside Mr Adams at a Sinn Fein conference in 1989, are currently being tried in Bogota on charges of training the Farc's recruits. A senior US defence official said: "The Farc is using very sophisticated car bombs, mortars and remote controlled devices that have been developed with the help of European terrorist groups such as the IRA and ETA.

"They've activated a plan to shift to urban terrorism. Their attacks are now even more indiscriminate than before. They really don't care who they kill.

"The Farc has also been increasingly targeting Uribe [Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president] - 12 times this year. And it has been deliberately targeting Americans. The whole thing is a package, a completely new approach." After lobbying from the Pentagon and pressure from Congress, the Bush administration has allowed money from budgets for the war against terrorism to be allocated to Colombia. "Including Colombia in the global war against terrorism changes priorities and makes it easier to give them [the Colombian government] certain assets," said the senior defence official. Last month Thomas Janis, 56, a former Delta Force soldier, and Sgt Luis Alcides Cruz, of Colombian military intelligence, were shot dead at close range after the Cessna crash landed.

Mr Janis and the three contractors, also former soldiers, taken hostage were working on electronic surveillance of coca fields, source of 90 per cent of the cocaine smuggled into America. The Farc declared them "gringo CIA agents". So far, a search operation, including the use of around 100 US Special Forces troops, has failed to locate them. "We don't know much but I'm afraid they are now out of the box where they were captured," said the defence official. "We know how they are but not where they are. One may have been bitten by a snake and this could be very bad news."

a.. Jeremy McDermott in Medellin writes: A renegade guerrilla, John Alexander Rodriguez Caviedes, 19, claims to have video and photographic evidence to prove that he was taught to build bombs and fire rocket launchers by the three alleged IRA men on trial in Colombia. Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan were arrested in August 2001 as they stepped off a plane from a Farc stronghold in the south of the country.

Pataki sidesteps his Adams problem

Sinn Fein leader becomes political liability for New York governor

This St. Patrick’s Day, Governor George Pataki is not expected to break Irish soda bread with his pal from Belfast, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. Given Adams’ harsh, little-noticed words for the Bush administration in mid-February, Pataki may want to jot a quick note of thanks to Adams for not visiting Albany.

Like many top New York Republicans, Pataki is a loyal ally of the Bush administration and its war on terror, but he is also a longtime admirer of Adams, the charismatic leader of a political party affiliated with the Irish Republican Army. Adams put Pataki -- and other New York Republicans, such as Long Island Congressman Peter King -- in a tough spot several days ago, when he blasted the Bush administration’s plans for war on Iraq.

"If war is to be declared," Adams said, "it should be war against poverty and for equality." With rhetoric like that, one is tempted to ask: Why were Pataki and other G.O.P. leaders marching around with this guy in the first place? The surface answer is obvious enough. Adams is an historic figure who, after decades of bloodshed, helped bring peace to Northern Ireland. Pataki, meanwhile, has reaped substantial benefits playing up his own maternal Irish roots in a state where Irish Catholics remain an important swing vote in suburban and upstate regions. So, ever since the Clinton administration allowed Adams to enter the country in the mid-1990’s, Pataki has made sure to schedule plenty of photo ops, especially around St. Patrick’s Day. But one wonders how well Pataki’s relationship with Adams sits with President Bush. After all, it’s an open secret that Pataki is angling for a job in the Bush administration. But Pataki’s leftward lurch during his second term made him few friends among social and fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party. Imagine the fun they’d have passing around photos of Pataki grinning alongside Adams -- a left-wing, antiwar European whose supporters have, unfairly or not, been linked with terrorist acts on several continents.

Particularly bothersome of late to the Bush administration (and hence trouble for Pataki) is a trial unfolding in Bogotá, Colombia, where three Irishmen (including a top Sinn Fein aide) stand accused of training left-wing Colombian terrorists. Adams has said that Sinn Fein had no knowledge of, much less involvement in, the Colombia fiasco. But that didn’t prevent the Pataki-friendly (most of the time, anyway) New York Post from running an editorial which cast Adams as Osama bin Laden’s blood brother. Consider the Murdochian source, Adams’ supporters sensibly argue. But the Post does reflect the sentiments of key G.O.P. supporters. At this delicate time, Pataki’s relationship with Adams may prove as damaging in Washington as it has been helpful in New York. Sources within the Pataki administration say they believe the Governor can diplomatically agree to disagree with Adams on Iraq. Congressman King -- who has been talking about running for the U.S. Senate next year -- said that Adams’ opposition to the war "certainly doesn’t help" the Sinn Fein leader’s standing in America. But, he added, Adams can weather that storm "as long as he doesn’t make this into an anti-American attack."

All of this still leaves Pataki in a bind. On the one hand, with St. Patrick’s Day approaching -- and with Pataki’s poll numbers plummeting -- don’t expect the Governor’s "Irish strategy" to abate any time soon. Several weeks ago, Pataki was scheduled to be the featured speaker at a dinner in Dublin (the latest of several trips to the Emerald Isle), but the heightened terror alert contributed to a last-minute cancellation.

Ubiquitous terror alerts, of course, do not work to the advantage of Adams. Though he has evolved into a widely respected leader, the shadow of the gunman still follows him. Last year, journalist Ed Moloney offered "definitive" proof that Adams was once a member of the I.R.A. This was significant news, interested observers admitted -- after they were done yawning, that is. In the U.S. (and particularly in New York), Adams’ spotty past is not only accepted, but nearly revered. It is one thing, however, to forgive Adams’ past transgressions against the British. (And even that is questionable, given the current warm relationship between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.) It is quite another matter to vocally oppose war in Iraq and also to remain associated in any way with terrorist escapades in South America. As Pataki continues to drop in the polls -- thanks to a tanking state economy and looming service cuts -- a job with the Bush administration will surely look better and better. But as his pal Gerry Adams could certainly attest, the past may yet come back to haunt him.

Miller To Host ‘Guest of Honor’ Gerry Adams

White House Is Sour On Sinn Fein Boss

BY BENJAMIN SMITH

- City Council Speaker Gifford Miller is hosting a reception for Gerry Adams, the leader of political wing of the Irish Republican Army, The New York Sun has learned.

Mr. Adams was barred from the Oval Office at this year’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration, but he is listed as the guest of honor on invitations to the City Council’s “Irish Heritage Celebration” next Thursday. Meeting Mr. Adams is routine for New York politicians of both parties. But the trial in Bogota of three alleged IRA members accused of training Colombian “narco-terrorists” has soured the Bush administration on Mr. Adams, London’s Daily Telegraph reported yesterday. Last year, Mr. Adams, along with the Irish Prime Minister and the British Northern Ireland Secretary, met President Bush and posed for a group photograph, but there will be no photograph and no handshake this year.

“It’s terribly disappointing that President Bush has not been more engaged in Northern Ireland’s peace process, as President Clinton was,” said Mr. Miller’s chief spokesman, Christopher Policano. “Everyone, including Tony Blair, who spent last weekend with Gerry Adams in an effort to advance the Good Friday agreement, recognizes that he has been the critical player in the effort to bring peace to Northern Ireland.”

Mr. Policano said last night Mr. Adams would not be attending the New York “Irish Heritage Celebration” because of a scheduling conflict. The new controversy around the IRA, which is engaged in a formal peace process in Ireland, stems from the question of what the three Irishmen were doing in territory in Colombia controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the Farc. The Colombian government has accused them of training members of the group to conduct a campaign of terrorist bombing. The Farc also killed a defense contractor working for the U.S. Army and took three other Americans hostage after their plane crashed in a Colombian jungle.

Another council member who is co-hosting the event, Christine Quinn, said, “We should let the courts do their jobs in Colombia. The significant thing about Gerry Adams is that he’s a man of peace.” The invitation triggered a rant from the leader of the council’s Republican minority, James Oddo of Staten Island. He expressed incredulity at the visit, and at the council’s regular departures into foreign affairs, which have included a visit by the isolated president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe. “Since we apparently are becoming a satellite of the United Nations here in the City Council, I’m requesting that we get some of those translation headphones so that when some of my colleagues speak we can attempt to get their fanatical gibberish translated into a parlance that we rational folk can understand,” he said.

But Council Member Charles Barron of Brooklyn, who invited Mr. Mugabe, and later led a small trip to Zimbabwe sponsored by that country’s government, said the invitation to Mr. Adams smacks of “a double standard.”

“Gifford Miller stayed away from my causes of political prisoners and reparations and Robert Mugabe, and these are all very similar causes for independence,” he said. “There’s a real double standard when it comes to whose liberation struggle you’ll support.”

Tourism industry is early war casualty

Carriers, destination cities already feel pinch

By Alex Veiga

MIAMI -- The prospect of a U.S. war with Iraq has the nation's already troubled tourism industry bracing for even harder times. Walt Disney World has stopped hiring and cut some workers' hours. Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise line, is lowering prices in hopes of luring more passengers. And airlines might have to cut their schedules. All cite concerns over the possible impact of war on their business. Meanwhile, such tourism- dependent destinations as Florida, Nevada, New York and Hawaii are considering new advertising campaigns if a war keeps visitors away. "Even without factoring the war, we were looking to 2004, 2005 before we got back to 2000 levels," said Cathy Keefe, spokeswoman for the Washington-based Travel Industry Association of America. "War is inevitably going to push that recovery back even further." The consensus among industry leaders is that the effect of war on leisure travel depends on how long the conflict lasts and whether there are any terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Most agree international travel bookings will suffer if war breaks out, particularly hurting global airlines as it did 12 years ago during the Persian Gulf War. Airline passenger traffic declined 8 percent in the first quarter of 1991 and was down 2.2 percent for the year.

It bounced back in the first quarter of 1992, increasing 6.7 percent, according to the Air Transport Association, a trade organization that represents most of the major air carriers. Still, a recession and the effect of the war on air travel and jet fuel prices led to Midway and Pan Am airlines going under. Today, airlines again face high fuel costs, a sluggish economy, weak bookings following the Sept. 11 attacks and added security costs. United Airlines and US Airways are restructuring in bankruptcy court, and analysts have speculated American Airlines might follow. "We're trying to anticipate where the impact of war might be and calculate a response that will be commensurate," said Joe Hopkins, a spokesman for United, the nation's second-largest airline. Todd Burke, spokesman for American, the nation's largest carrier, said the airline is prepared to make flight schedule decisions if necessary. "We expect a drop-off in traffic, especially in international markets, such as Europe, but how deep these cuts might be will depend on the extent of military action," Burke said.

ATA spokesman Michael Wascom said airlines have seen gains in passenger traffic over the past year -- the group tallied a 3.4 percent increase in January from a year earlier -- but totals are still down from the same period in 2000 and 2001. The cruise industry, meanwhile, appears better positioned than it was in 1990 and 1991. At the start of the Gulf War, cruise lines saw bookings drop, but reservations recovered as the conflict drew to a close after a few weeks. Back then, the cruise lines shifted itineraries closer to the United States -- and made similar moves following the terrorist attacks, aiming to reduce the need for customers to fly to their ports. "Certainly in '91 we were a lot more reliant on air travel than we are today, as we have spread out our ships," said Tim Gallagher, spokesman for Carnival, which sails from 18 ports. Carnival and No. 2 Royal Caribbean Cruises reported in recent weeks that uncertainty over war in Iraq and the economy have depressed bookings this year. Lower demand has forced the cruise companies to drop prices. Norwegian Cruise Line also has lost bookings because of concerns over war, said Colin Veitch, president and chief executive.

"What it will mean is fantastic deals for consumers," he said. Tourism-dependent spots already have found would-be vacationers are having second thoughts. Last month, Walt Disney World said it might lay off workers if business worsens amid war fears and slow bookings. The company cut back the hours of some of its part-time employees at the theme park and froze hiring indefinitely at all its central Florida attractions and resorts.

Many destinations are considering new marketing campaigns. "The concern right now is that even without a war, there's already a fear of war, and that's causing some soft bookings," said Frank Haas, director of marketing for the Hawaii Tourism Authority.

Haas said Hawaii is particularly vulnerable because most people must fly to get to the state. Last year, international arrivals made up one-third of its visitors. In Las Vegas, "very likely we will be focusing any marketing effort that we do on our short-haul and drive-in markets," said Erika Brandvick, spokeswoman for the city's convention and visitor authority. "We can pretty much expect that international visitation will all but cease, initially."

Tom Flanigan, spokesman for Visit Florida, the state's tourism promotion agency, said it will conduct weekly surveys of hotel operators and other tourist- related businesses to assess any damage. In 1991, Florida had 1 million fewer visitors than it had in 1990. "How many of those million stayed home because of hesitancy about the war and how many stayed home because of (the economy) is impossible to calculate," Flanigan said.

Florida had a record number of tourists in 2002, but their stays were shorter and they spent less money than in the past. And while hotel operators in north Florida have fared well because of a healthy drive-in market, the fly-in dependent South Florida and central Florida theme park hub are hurting. An assessment by the Orlando-Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau concluded that if a new war is relatively short and there are no acts of domestic terrorism, tourism will reach prewar levels in about a year.

"You can look back at the Gulf War, but things are different now," Keefe said. "We have had an attack on our own soil. Security was never really an issue before.

Proposed power to punish Sinn Fein could make or break new Northern Ireland deal

By Shawn Pogatchnik

ASSOCIATED PRESS

1:54 p.m., March 5, 2003

DUBLIN, Ireland - The prospect that Sinn Fein politicians could be kicked out of any future Northern Ireland government as punishment for Irish Republican Army aggressions emerged Wednesday as the issue that could make or break any new peacemaking deal.

To Sinn Fein's dismay, both Britain and Ireland backed Protestant demands for this reassurance during negotiations that concluded Tuesday night at Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast. Britain also announced that elections to Northern Ireland's legislature would be postponed four weeks until May 29 to permit more time for a breakthrough.

Two days of talks produced substantial progress, negotiators agreed, chiefly involving British commitments on a vast range of issues, including troop cutbacks, police reform, a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights and the prospect of appointing more Catholic judges.

But efforts to resurrect Northern Ireland's suspended Catholic-Protestant administration - the key achievement of the 1998 peace accord - foundered on the question of whether Sinn Fein would accept a new so-called "sanctions" system demanded by the major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists.

As currently proposed, a new Verification Commission involving diplomats from Britain, Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United States would publish occasional reports on whether the IRA was abstaining from all threatening activities. The verifiers could rule that the IRA was undermining its 1997 cease-fire by, for instance, gathering intelligence on potential targets, smuggling in fresh weapons supplies or attacking criminal opponents within its Catholic power bases. The IRA has continued all these activities despite its truce. If that happened, lawmakers could ask Britain to impose one of a range of "sanctions" against Sinn Fein. The most severe sanction would be to eject Sinn Fein from the four-party coalition until the IRA started correcting its transgressions.

But Sinn Fein insisted it could not accept any new restrictions on the party's right to hold office. It insisted it was separate from the IRA, a view dismissed by other parties and the IRA's own field manual, the Green Book, which describes the need for Sinn Fein to remain under "army control."

Ultra Irish Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, whom police and history books identify as a veteran member of the IRA's seven-man command, protested that sanctions would be "aimed at us, for something that another organization (the IRA) may or may not be responsible for. That's totally unacceptable." Under current rules, Sinn Fein could be ousted only if majorities on both the Catholic and Protestant sides of Northern Ireland's legislature supported the move. The new proposals would switch the final say to Britain's governor, Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy. He currently wields the power only to take control away from the entire administration, as has happened four times since its formation in December 1999.

Significantly, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern agreed Wednesday with his British counterpart, Tony Blair, that the power-sharing experiment needed some form of sanctions to reassure Protestants to resume work with Sinn Fein. "My view about sanctions is very simple," Ahern said. "If all that we have achieved and are working to achieve works effectively, we won't have to use any sanctions. The real question is that we hope it will not be necessary."

Suspects listed in al-Qaeda materials

By Toni Locy and Kevin Johnson,

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities have found the names of up to a dozen U.S.-based al-Qaeda sympathizers in materials seized during the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the terrorist network's operations chief, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The sources said the suspects already were being watched by the FBI. But finding their names in Mohammed's belongings is key confirmation for authorities that the suspects may pose a significant public safety threat. Since last year, the FBI has been monitoring the activities of more than 200 possible al-Qaeda operatives in the USA.

Mohammed, the highest-ranking al-Qaeda official in U.S. custody, is believed to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. He was captured last Saturday in Pakistan with Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the alleged paymaster for the 19 hijackers involved in the attacks on New York and Washington. Four days after the seizure, U.S. investigators described Mohammed's materials as "the mother lode." Some are so encouraged that they believe the information could lead them to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. Since Mohammed's capture, the FBI has been concerned about possible retaliatory strikes by al-Qaeda operatives in the USA and abroad. On Wednesday, the FBI issued a formal alert to thousands of state and local law enforcement agencies, warning them of the prospect of retaliatory attacks.

Some timid Christians out there are telling me my plan for "Taking America Back" is just too radical.

They cite Romans 13 and the Gospel's teaching about "rendering unto Caesar" as scriptural injunctions against rebellion and tyranny. Some go so far as to suggest that since government is of God, then all government decrees are to be obeyed as proceeding from God. The logic of some arguments would lead inexorably to two conclusions:

America's founders were wrong to reject British rule and to take up arms for independence.

Kings and rulers in this world have divine rights and citizen-subjects should simply obey them all the time in every circumstance. In other words, these Christians have been hoodwinked. They've been sold a bill of goods. They are operating under a misguided and simplistic interpretation of scripture. America's founders were scholars when it came to the scriptures. John Adams read the Bible daily in both Hebrew and Greek. Even Jefferson, the skeptic, quoted scripture and would be, by today's standards, a radical, right-wing Christian.

Nearly 200 years before America's War of Independence, a Frenchman by the name of Philippe du Plessis Mornay explained that while government as an institution was ordained by God, specific governments may not be. In fact, the Bible, in Hebrews 11, for instance, celebrates men and women of faith such as Daniel, Moses, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and others, who all committed civil disobedience – rebellion against unjust rule. Some of the Apostles themselves refused to submit to Caesar and paid with their lives. America's founders understood that biblically it is wrong to resist the institution of government in general, but it is equally wrong not to resist bad government. The age of the divine right of kings had come to an end. Today, it seems, many Christians are trying to bring it back.

Here's how James Otis, one of the Sons of Liberty, explained it: "The power of God Almighty is the only power that can properly and strictly be called supreme and absolute. In the order of nature immediately under Him comes the power of a simple democracy, or the power of the whole over the whole. ... [God is] the only monarch in the universe who has a clear and indisputable right to absolute power because He is the only one who is omniscient as well as omnipotent. ... The sum of my argument is that civil government is of God, that the administrators of it were originally the whole people."

Here's how John Dickinson, a signer of the Constitution, explained it: "Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness. ... We claim them from a higher source — from the King of kings, and Lord of all the earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; exist with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power without taking our lives. In short, they are founded on the immutable maxims of reason and justice. It would be an insult on the Divine Majesty to say that he has given or allowed any man or body of men a right to make me miserable."

Clearly, the founders saw their revolution not as an act of anarchy or misplaced rebellion, but rather as an act of resistance against a government violating biblical principles.

In that same spirit, I wrote "Taking America Back" and have called, in effect, for a second American revolution – a renewal of the founders' vision of expanding freedom. Not surprisingly, it has scared some people. It has scared some Christians. It has scared some of the very people who should be leading such a movement.

But we Americans are a self-governing people – or we're supposed to be. Thus, we are not subject to the whims of rulers. Instead, like all individuals, we are accountable directly to God. As Christians, we serve no king but the King of Kings. And that's a lesson I'd advise the church to learn – quickly.

Putting a face on malpractice insurance debate By Rita Rubin,

In the debate swirling around what some call a medical malpractice insurance crisis, the sides are pretty well drawn: doctors, hospitals and insurance companies vs. the trial lawyers. But where do patients fit in? Doctors and hospitals say patients will find it increasingly difficult to obtain care if lawmakers do not enact tort reform to stem frivolous lawsuits and escalating payouts. Trial lawyers argue that tort reform — especially a cap on damages for pain and suffering — will block the only route by which some patients or their families can get compensated for mistakes by incompetent doctors. The truth is probably somewhere in between. Doctors say patients in smaller towns and rural areas are just a heartbeat away from suffering because of rising premiums. At a news conference Monday, American Medical Association president Yank Coble Jr. said excessive premiums drove two neurosurgeons in Joliet, Ill., to give up brain surgery, leaving the town without 24-hour trauma coverage. Though doctors in several states temporarily walked off the job this winter to push tort reform, they haven't been moving out in droves. Norm Steenstra, executive director of the West Virginia Citizens Action Group, says he has seen no evidence of a doctor shortage in his state, one of 18 on the AMA's malpractice insurance "crisis" list.

"This is the most orchestrated and lockstep campaign I've ever seen," says Steenstra, whose public interest organization is allied with the trial lawyers. "They have literally scared the blue-haired ladies and the pregnant moms that there's not going to be doctors." Obstetrics especially hard-hit But malpractice premiums do influence where young doctors settle and when older doctors retire, says Cheye Calvo of the National Conference of State Legislatures. In Nevada, another AMA crisis state, 35 doctors recently closed their practices, 12 retired and six dropped obstetrics, according to a study by the state's legislative research division. Meanwhile, the state issued 335 new physician licenses last year. Obstetrics has been one of the hardest-hit specialties, partly because in some states the statute of limitations for lawsuits over a problem present at birth is 20 years. Some OB-GYNs have seen their premiums double in the past couple of years, while their reimbursement rates haven't changed. To reduce their premiums and their liability exposure, some OB-GYNs have stopped caring for pregnant women and delivering babies. But the situation does not appear to be as dire as an ad run by the New Jersey Hospital Association suggests. The ad depicts a very pregnant woman who, according to the text, must scramble to find a doctor to deliver her baby because soaring malpractice premiums forced her own obstetrician to close his office.

Delores Williams, an OB-GYN in Trenton, N.J., who has been in practice since 1989, questions whether it would even be legal for a doctor to abandon a patient just a few weeks before her due date. Williams says she decided Jan. 1 to stop delivering babies July 15. "I feel an obligation to deliver the patients who are already in my practice," she says, but she is referring newly pregnant patients to two other OB-GYNs. Two years ago, Williams says, she was paying about $35,000 a year for malpractice insurance. If she continued to deliver babies, she'd now have to pay $86,000, says Williams, who adds that she has been sued twice — once by a patient she had never met. In that case, she says, she was subbing for another doctor as backup for a midwife. Her patients say they are disappointed Williams will not be there for their pregnancies. "She's been my doctor for quite some time, and I feel really comfortable with her," says Lori Height, 27, of Point Pleasant, N.J., whose first baby is due in June. "It's a shame. Whenever we do plan for our second child, we're going to have to go somewhere else." Critics argue that tort reform does not get at the root of the problem, which they say is bad doctors.

"Get rid of the bad doctors," says Charlene Noel of Beckley, W. Va., who spoke against tort reform recently at a state Senate committee hearing on the subject. Lower the cap on awards for pain and suffering, and "you're opening up the floodgate for the bad doctors to come here," Noel says. Noel and her husband, Ireland, a retired pastor, sued a local hospital, saying his neck was broken in an attempt to stabilize him for transport to another facility after a fall at home five years ago. He was left paralyzed from the chest down. They settled out of court in 2000, says Charlene Noel, who cared for her husband at home until his death from pneumonia in August at age 62. Lori Bounds of Mount Carbon, W.Va., says her lawyer is representing four families in suits against a local surgeon. Bounds and her husband say the surgeon tore their son Forrest's urethra — the tube that carries urine from the bladder through the penis. Forrest was just under 4 weeks old when the surgeon drained a cyst in his kidney. Now 3½, "he can't pee through his penis, and he has no bladder control," Bounds says. Bounds and her husband, a contractor, sued the surgeon and the hospital two years ago. "He has all these lawsuits against him, and nobody knows," she says. "That's what bothers me."

Irish Independent 6th March

IRA gunmen admit firing at soldiers on Bloody Sunday

TWO members of the Official IRA have admitted firing at British soldiers in Derry on Bloody Sunday. One has said he fired a single rifle shot before the deployment of paratroopers into the Bogside and the other has said he aimed two pistol shots at the advancing paratroopers. The IRA gunman who fired the rifle shot at paratroopers said he did so after hearing that two civilians, Damien Donaghy and John Johnston, had been wounded by soldiers. The second gunman admits he is the figure in a photograph firing pistol shots at paratroopers as they advanced into the Bogside. Their admissions are contained in 81 pages of statements submitted to the inquiry yesterday by five men who were members of the Official IRA during the Bogside killings 31 years ago. One of them also confirms in his statement that another Official IRA gunman was wounded during an exchange of shots with British soldiers hours after the Bloody Sunday killings.

The wounded man, who has already been named during the inquiry's hearings as Red Mickey Doherty, was shot in the leg by a British soldier after he'd opened fire on an army patrol. The five, all of whom have been granted anonymity by the inquiry's three judges, include the then officer commanding the Official IRA in the North-West.

In his statement to the inquiry, the Official IRA gunman who fired the two pistol shots at the paratroopers said the Official IRA had been ordered to "maintain a defensive stance" during the Bloody Sunday march. Meanwhile, a senior British commander has told the inquiry the SAS were not on duty in Derry on Bloody Sunday. "As commander officer of 22 SAS Regiment it is within my knowledge that the SAS were not deployed in Derry on or in the days leading up to or after January 30, 1972," his statement says.

The Inquiry continues.

Irish Independent 5th March

Ex-Farc guerrilla 'IRA links'

A FORMER member of the guerrilla group Farc yesterday became the first witness to identify the three Irishmen on trial in Colombia. John Alexander Rodriguez Caveides, who is described as a FARC deserter who was formerly a bodyguard and chauffeur for FARC commander Fabian Ramirez, is the second former FARC guerrilla to testify that he witnessed the three Irishmen training members of FARC in the former demilitarised zone.

During a low key hearing in the town of Medellin yesterday, Caveides claimed he was an active participant in training that occurred on three occasions in December 1998, February 1999 and December 2000, all of which took place at Los Pozos in Caqueta, about 220 miles south of Bogota.

He claimed that during training he received instruction in such things as leg-breaking mines, how to charge a 40-pound bomb and how to fire rocket launchers and mortars.

The three Irishmen , Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley, and James Monaghan were arrested in August 2001 at El Dorado airport in Bogota on charges of carrying false passports and helping to train FARC members in terrorist techniques in the former demilitarized zone.

All three maintain they were visiting Colombia to observe the then struggling peace process and see some of Colombia's natural beauty. They are currently being held in El Modelo prison in Bogota and if convicted of training FARC members they face up to 20 years in prison.

The defence claims to have sworn affidavits that say that Connolly and McCauley were not in Colombia at the times specified by Caveides. Sile McGuire, of the Irish Embassy in Mexico is expected to testify that Connolly was at at dinner in Cuba on one occasion that Caveides claims he was in Colombia.

Rachel Van Dongen

The IRA will never decommission its myths

Kevin Toolis

Asking a republican to dump his gun is like asking him to surrender his soul

Why doesn't the IRA get rid of its Kalashnikov rifles, its Semtex explosives, its surface-to-air missiles, its whole terrorist arsenal, and get on with the peace process? You'd think that even Gerry Adams would be bored to death with all his lame explanations about why everyone else is to blame. And why the little matter of IRA decommissioning has got nothing to do with Ulster's endless impasse. The answer surely is obvious. Declare your war is over. Give up your guns and the Unionists might just start trusting you and the peace process, the Stormont Assembly et al, might truly begin to work. After all, why does a supposedly democratic party need to hang on to guns and bombs if it truly is a democratic party? Like lots of simple questions in Ireland the real answer is complex and mired in myth, murder and political strategy.

The first part of the answer lies in history and the actions of the man the present Irish Republic, and the Provisionals, revere as the founding father of the State. When Padraig Pearse, and his doomed rag-tag rebel army, took over the General Post Office on O'Connell Street in Dublin at Easter in 1916 and walked outside to proclaim an Irish republic, he wasn't trumpeting the greatness of parliamentary politics. The Easter Proclamation was, and is, a chilling semifascistic rant that is heavy on the power of arms, blood sacrifice and dead children to bring a united Ireland into being. Killing "alien" British soldiers was, Pearse declared, the "fundamental right" of all true Irish republicans. Guns and bombs were the way forward. In the end, Pearse got what he wanted, a honourable execution by baffled British Army generals, but his poisonous legacy lived on, inspiring generation after generation of young Irishmen to take up the gun. The proclamation is still read out, usually by a child, at every republican Easter commemoration, traditionally held at the graveside of dead IRA volunteers. Peace process or no peace process, there will be the same bitter words at Easter 2003 as there were in 1916.

For decades guns were the raison d'être of the republican movement. Shooting squaddies in the head and blowing up cities distinguished the IRA from all the other sell-outs, traitors and gombeen-men (usurers) who crowded into the Irish Dail. In republican eyes politics was synonymous with treachery. Giving up guns is not therefore just another tactical move in the drawn-out Ulster conflict, it is a revolutionary overthrow of the IRA's founding myths. For the IRA the possession of weaponry has a totemic power, far greater than its military value. Guns are part of the IRA's constitution. "Decommissioning" IRA weapons is like spitting on Pearse's grave. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are all too aware of how tricky the decommissioning issue is for their republican rank and file. If Sinn Fein truly were a democratic party there would be no decommissioning at all. There are no votes in Irish republicanism in destroying the IRA's limited and precious arsenal.

But luckily Sinn Fein is a democratic party in the same way as the "democratic centralist" communist parties of the Eastern bloc were democratic. Adams and McGuinness are part of the same tiny hermetic leadership elite that has ruled the IRA since the early 1970s. They fire and call the shots. It is clear that Adams does now accept that he will have to provide an "act of completion" - a significant act of arms destruction - to get the Unionists back into the Stormont Assembly. In truth, any act of "decommissioning" is really just an act of political symbolism - terrorist groups can always replenish their arsenal tomorrow and most of the IRA's big London bombs relied on agricultural fertiliser as explosive. But symbols still count for a lot in Ulster. David Trimble has demanded that this future act of IRA decommissioning be filmed to reassure critics within the Unionist camp that the IRA is at last living up to its promises. Hell will freeze over first.

Internally the IRA can never be seen to surrender to the ancient English enemy. There can be no humiliating television pictures to be played over and over in the bars of Dundalk of how the Bold Fenian Men of the Provisional IRA got down on their knees and handed their guns to the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at the behest of the loathed David Trimble.

The minute such pictures did appear is the same minute that the Provisionals would split and the buried political vault that currently contains physical-force republicanism break open. A new IRA-style terror group would soon stalk the fields of Ireland.

We might get more details, have more independent witnesses, but all and every act of republican sacrilege - destroying guns - will remain shrouded in the fog of denial.

The third and final reason for the interminable delay on decommissioning is tactics. The IRA's guns are its last aces in the hole, the biggest bargaining chip that the Provisionals have. It is their final guarantee that the Brits will live up to the unspoken bargain that underpins the entire peace process; that in return for an IRA cessation of violence the British Crown will slowly, covertly, but irrevocably, retreat from its last Irish province.

When Gerry Adams plays that card he wants to be sure that he can extract the highest price.

No one should be fooled. The IRA might bury its guns but its fundamental aim remains the same. Like the organisation's political forefather Pearse, it doesn't want to accommodate British rule in Ireland, it wants to destroy it politically.

Kevin Toolis is the author of Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the IRA Soul.

Widow's dismay at 'cruel' amnesty plan

By Christopher Walker in Holywood, Co Down

ALONE in the draughty former nursing home where she has lived since her husband died after 13 years in a coma as a result of the 1987 IRA Remembrance Sunday bomb, Noreen Hill greeted the efforts to rescue the peace process with dismay. If or when the emerging package is agreed, it will grant a "cruel and totally unjustified amnesty" to Charlie Caufield and about 30 other IRA fugitives. "He will have his freedom while people like me have lost our freedom as the result of the violence he caused," Mrs Hill said.

"It seems ludicrous that we are prepared to go to war against Iraq for crimes they have not yet committed, while in Northern Ireland IRA killers will be allowed to walk the streets despite crimes they have already perpetrated." Mrs Hill was speaking in the room next to the one where she nursed Ronnie, a former missionary and popular headmaster. Together they had four children and six grandchildren, none of whom ever heard him speak before he died at the age of 69 in December 2000, the 12th victim of the Poppy Day Massacre.

Caufield, 47, and other fugitives will be able to return to Northern Ireland after facing in absentia a judicial commission that will say they will not be jailed, providing the terror organisation they belonged to remains on ceasefire. The plan will allow them a similar licence to that of terrorist prisoners freed under the Good Friday agreement.

Caufield now lives across the Irish border in Monaghan with his schoolteacher girlfriend.