Adams and McGuiness ‘quit’ the IRA
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and the party’s chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, have quit the IRA’s ruling council, according to the Irish justice minister.
Michael McDowell said he believed Mr Adams and Mr McGuiness have left the Provisionals’ seven-man body along with Martin Ferris, a Sinn Fein representative in the Irish parliament.
The three men had stood down ahead of the widely anticipated statement on arms decommissioning and the IRA’s future, he said.
Mr Adams has consistently denied ever holding membership of the outlawed group. But Mr McDowell claimed earlier this year the Sinn Fein members were on the IRA’s ruling council when the IRA was linked to the massive Northern Bank robbery.
Last night Mr McDowell cautioned Mr Adams’ purported relinquishing of power in the IRA did not amount to a veritable “severance” between the IRA and Sinn Fein.
The claims come against a background of movement on a possible IRA statement on decommissioning. In April, Mr Adams issued a challenge to the organisation to give up its arms and embrace the political process.
Expectation that a statement in response to this outlining the future of the IRA will be issued soon is growing, particularly with the decision of John de Chastelain, the retired general overseeing the decommissioning process, to prolong his stay in Ireland this week.
And the Sinn Fein leadership has met both the Irish and British governments in the last 24 hours. A Sinn Fein delegation met Irish premier Bertie Ahern on Monday, following the meeting between Gerry Adams and Tony Blair in Downing Street.
Mr McDowell said for the Provisionals’ statement to have any credence it must embrace total weapons decommissioning – “every single pistol, every single bullet, the lot”.
“There’s no question of governments on either side of the border tolerating the continued existence of an unlawful organisation,” he said.
DUP East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell agreed with the sentiment, saying IRA violence must be dismantled “totally”. The IRA must be “out of guns and out of business”, he said.
The DUP refuses to join Sinn Fein in a power-sharing government at Stormont unless the IRA disbands and republican leaders embrace solely democratic means.
New UUP leader Sir Reg Empey has said unionists are “almost bored stiff” with statements from the IRA.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair refused to compare the activities of al-Qaida to those of the IRA’s. Speaking at his weekly news conference on Tuesday, he said it wrong to compare the political demands of republicanism with those of the “terrorist ideology” the world was facing.
“I don’t think the IRA would ever have set about trying to kill 3,000 people,” he said.
