Peace-Seeker Tries To Weather Downturn
by Jim Dee
Boston Herald, Monday, September 15, 2003

DUBLIN, Ireland - In May 2002, Irish premier Bertie Ahern cashed in on years of unprecedented double-digit economic growth to win a landslide re-election. Since then, mounting economic and social woes have sent the political sharks circling. And only his peace process efforts seem beyond reproach.

But Ahern says his critics need to get real.

"When you get somebody saying, `It's a crisis. We're not growing at 11 percent!' . . . you can't take that seriously,'" Ahern, 52, said during a Boston Herald interview at his Government Buildings office in Dublin.

"We're not going to be able to grow at the kind of rates we were going, because that wouldn't be physically possible," he added. "But we do believe we can regrow the economy at rates of 4 or 5 percent."

Since becoming Taoiseach (pronounced "Tee-shuck"), or prime minister, in June 1997, Ahern has poured great energy into the peace process.

On Sept. 24, the University of Connecticut will award him and British Prime Minister Tony Blair a peace award for their work on 1998's Good Friday agreement.

Ahern clearly values Blair. "We've had arguments and rows certainly, but we haven't fallen out over them. And that's been very important," he said.

Blair iced Northern Ireland's government in October amid an Irish Republican Army espionage scandal. He then canceled May's scheduled assembly election after deeming IRA peace pledges too weak.

Saturday, Ahern and Blair met privately in England amid speculation Blair may call a November poll. On Sept. 4, Britain and Ireland created a four-man panel to monitor compliance with the peace pact. If the IRA is deemed in breach, their allies in Sinn Fein could be tossed from the power-sharing Cabinet - a stipulation designed to placate pro-British unionists.

But Sinn Fein says that, unless Blair calls an election, the IRA won't consider fully disarming or standing down its units - things which London, Dublin, and unionists insist must happen before the assembly is revived.

"I don't think unionists are going to have the trust and confidence fully with Sinn Fein until they know . . . paramilitary activity is coming to an end," Ahern said. "And, in fairness to (Sinn Fein leaders) Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, I'm absolutely certain that they're trying to do that."

But Ahern also acknowledged the IRA is unlikely to move while bickering between pro- and anti-accord factions in the Ulster Unionist Party leaves serious doubts over the UUP's ability to honor any compromise deal.

"You're not going to get the republican family to come to that position until they think they're going to get the proper response," Ahern said.

But Ahern has more than the peace process to worry about. Soon after Ahern's Fianna Fail party won a plurality with 81 of 166 seats in the 2002 election to the Irish parliament, the Dail, the economy stalled.

Economic growth this year has been only 1.5 percent. And Ireland ran a $1 billion-plus spending deficit for the first eight months of the year. During the same period last year it had a $1.1 billion budget surplus.

But Ahern points out that, despite the setbacks, unemployment is now 4.5 percent - in a country dogged by double-digit joblessness throughout the 1980s, when upward of 40,000 people went abroad annually searching for work.

And he says an Irish recovery depends on global economic trends.

"We export about 80 percent of what we do, so we can never be self-sufficient. . . . But all economic models are saying . . . as soon as the international upturn comes we should be able to go back to between 4 and 5 percent growth."

Adding to his troubles was the Sept. 3 resignation of the head of a commission he created in 1999 to probe allegations of sexual abuse in state-financed orphanages run by the Catholic Church.

Justice Mary Laffoy accused Ahern's government of obstructing her. But Ahern blames overly combative lawyers.

"We never thought there would be such adversarial legal battles about every single case," said Ahern, who wants to streamline commission procedures. "We're into the third year. And we've done 40 cases out of 1,700. We just have to find a better way."

On the recent dramatic changes in Irish society, Ahern said, "I welcome that the people who are growing up now in my community are no longer emigrating. . . . The downside of it is, life is busier. . . . But you just have to balance it up."

Murphy: Spring Brings Renewed Promise Of Peace (Interview: Paul Murphy, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary)
by Jim Dee
Boston Sunday Herald , March 16, 2003

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The row over the fate of Iraq's weapons may soon trigger war. But on Europe's outermost edge, the arms standoff that has long dogged the Irish peace process may soon be dramatically resolved, according to Britain's top man here.

"I'm very optimistic," said Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy during a Boston Sunday Herald interview at his Belfast office last week. "Obviously, there are very difficult issues, and I wouldn't want to underestimate them. But I do feel that people want to go forward."

Welsh-born Murphy, whose father's family hailed from county Cork, was the right-hand man of then Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam during talks that culminated in the Good Friday agreement.

He lists the forging of the peace accord as "one of the most moving moments of my life."

Murphy said when talks co-chairman George Mitchell addressed parties on April 10, 1998, at the end of peace talks, "he opened by saying that this was the beginning of the process, not the end of it. And he was right, in that anybody who thought we'd have a smooth ride between 1998 and now - and from now on - would be mistaken."

The ride has been anything but smooth.

To date, there have been two prolonged suspensions - as well as two others that lasted 24 hours - of the North's power-sharing government in three years.

Britain imposed the current suspension in October to avert a walkout by the pro-British Ulster Unionist Party, which was angry about allegations that the IRA was operating a spy ring inside the assembly. Sinn Fein believes Britain was wrong to suspend the assembly.

It believes that, as happens in other parliamentary-style governments, the UUP should have been allowed to walk, and then elections should have been called.

But Murphy says that scenario can't yet happen here because the North has a "unique system of government . . . designed specifically to govern in a divided society where there was huge suspicion. . . . It wouldn't work otherwise."

Whether it works at all could be determined in the coming weeks.

On March 3, a deal was almost cobbled together that would have seen the IRA swap a major disarmament move for sweeping British Army demilitarization, and further changes in the already substantially reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland.

In addition, Britain would offer a de facto amnesty to IRA fugitives - or "On-The-Runs," as they're called locally.

But the UUP, which also wants the IRA to publicly declare its war is over, won't sign off on a deal unless Sinn Fein is hit with automatic sanctions in the event that the IRA is deemed in breach of the new deal.

Sinn Fein opposes sanctions, saying they violate the peace pact. But Britain and Ireland support the UUP's position, and it's expected a sanctions provision will be in a package deal that British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern will present to parties in early April.

Asked if he thought the IRA's war is over, Murphy replied, "I hope it is. Certainly the cease-fire is intact. But I also know there has been activity by paramilitary organizations, including the IRA."

He's confident a deal will be cut and that fresh assembly elections will be held May 29. But, as usual, there's a fly in the ointment.

Many pundits predict Sinn Fein and the hard-line anti-peace-pact Democratic Unionist Party will become the assembly's largest parties. And, though Sinn Fein says it will work with the DUP, the power-sharing Cabinet could again be pitched into crisis if the DUP refuses to play ball.

Murphy, who gets paid to be unflappable, shrugs off the scenario, saying, "We've got to live with whatever it is that emerges from those elections. Because that is going to be the will of the people."

Despite all the difficulties in implementing the peace deal, Murphy has been "encouraged rather than discouraged - even in the most difficult moments - in the knowledge that the politicians and the people I meet in Northern Ireland are some of the most courageous I've met in my life."

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid will likely suspend the North's assembly tomorrow because of an Irish Republican Army spying scandal.

In the last seven days, four people have been charged with passing the IRA thousands of classified documents, many of which were allegedly photocopied from Britain's Northern Ireland Office headquarters in Belfast.

Britain doesn't want to ice the assembly. But when David Trimble, the pro-British Ulster Unionist Party leader of the North's Cabinet, told British Prime Minister Tony Blair to boot Sinn Fein from government by Tuesday - or he'd sink it by yanking the UUP - Britain had little choice but to suspend.

It is the biggest crisis since 1998's Good Friday agreement was signed and one unionists blame totally on the IRA and Sinn Fein.

But a man whose name has been synonymous with both organizations for decades claims the scandal isn't what it seems.

"It's important that people in the U.S. know that there are people here who don't like this agreement and want to destroy it," Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness insisted during a Boston Sunday Herald interview in his Stormont office. "There are malicious people - within the British military establishment, within unionist paramilitaries, and within the political leadership of unionism - who would be delighted to see this peace process go up in smoke."

Denis Donaldson, Sinn Fein's head of operations at Stormont, was the first person charged. A back-pack containing the classified documents was allegedly found in his home during an Oct. 4 dawn police raid.

The scandal broke just two weeks after a previous Trimble threat to pull his party from government, in that case to obtain the disbandment of the IRA by Jan 18. McGuinness claims the timing of the raids was no coincidence, especially since the spy scandal eclipsed Trimble's previous ultimatum, which had earned him criticism from even the Bush administration.

"Anybody who doesn't believe that agenda is there doesn't understand the nature of the militarists within the British establishment," insisted McGuinness, a former Derry IRA leader, who's still considered a top figure in the group by police - an allegation he denies.

McGuinness, who has been education minister in the North's Cabinet for three years, says two facts about the scandal prove his point.

First, one of the four accused was allegedly caught doing covert photocopying and sacked from his job a year ago. So why the delay in arresting him?

Second, hours after the accused were arrested Oct. 4, dozens of police stormed Sinn Fein's Stormont offices to remove two computer disks, in an over-the-top operation for which the chief of police apologized later. The disks were subsequently returned and aren't part of the evidence against the accused.

McGuinness says the fact that the disks involved had absolutely nothing to do with the alleged espionage scandal proved the raid was a propaganda exercise against the party.

He said he doesn't know how the thousands of documents police allegedly found in Denis Donaldson's house got there, "But what I do know is that there's no prospect whatsoever of Denis Donaldson being involved in any illegal situation."

McGuinness also said many republicans saw the raids as an attempt to goad the IRA back to war. But he's confident the IRA "won't fall into that trap."

Whatever the truth about the origins of the crisis, the damage has been severe. But it might not be fatal. Past deadlocks over IRA disarmament were broken by carefully choreographed gestures - with the IRA making a move, and Britain reciprocating, usually on army demilitarization. And there are plenty of issues to trade about.

In addition to a desire that Britain reduce its 60 army installations and 12,000 troops it has in the Connecticut-sized North, Sinn Fein wants major amendments to Britain's November 2000 police reform legislation.

On the other side, the UUP wants the peace-pact-backing IRA - which has been on cease-fire for five years and has carried out two disarmament acts in the last year - to openly declare that its war is over, and disband.

While the IRA usually doesn't respond to ultimatums, it could issue statement worded in such a way that it satisfies enough moderate unionists to get them back into government if Britain offered substantial demilitarization and policing concessions.

And if such backroom horse-trading were completed before next May's scheduled assembly elections, moderate pro-peace-pact unionists could then have enough ammunition to repel the predicted surge by anti-accord unionists and thereby prevent them from driving the final nail into the accord's coffin.

This is all speculation, of course. And whatever happens in the next few months, McGuinness said Sinn Fein "will not allow any attempt to renegotiate the agreement."

He insists UUP hardliner's problems with the peace accord have nothing to do with the IRA's actions. "They have a deep-rooted political objection to the concepts of equality, sharing power and all-Ireland institutions," he said. "They're afraid of peace."

But, despite the uncertainty ahead, McGuinness remains optimistic.

"The tide of history is with the more progressive people within nationalism, republicanism and unionism," he said. "But what's worrying is the fact that the pro-agreement voices within unionism are silent. They've been dominated by the rejectionist anti-agreement unionists.

"The peace process has to continue," he said. "If people in the Middle East had the type of process that we have now - and it's an imperfect process - they would be singing for joy in the streets. There is no credible or sane alternative to it or the Good Friday agreement. There is no other show in town."

Sinn Fein Leader Arrives In Cuba Amid Protestations
by Jim Dee
Boston Herald, Monday, December 17, 2001

HAVANA - Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams arrived in Havana last night, beginning a four-day visit that has both raised eyebrows in Washington and evoked bitter condemnation from Northern Ireland's pro-British unionists.

Adams knows his visit may cause some concern among Irish-Americans but he believes they will understand his reasons for coming.

"Having been in America as recently as November, I know there will be some people who support the peace process, who support Sinn Fein . . . who will not agree with me going to Cuba," he told reporters. "But I think they will accept and understand it."

Adams, whose party is aligned with the Irish Republican Army, will personally thank Cuban President Fidel Castro for his unflagging political support for Irish republicanism during three decades of conflict in the North.

Castro, 75, was expected to meet Sinn Fein's delegation tomorrow or Wednesday. He will also unveil a plaque to 10 Irish republican prisoners who died while on a hunger strike 20 years ago. In 1981, shortly after the deaths of the strikers - seven IRA prisoners and three from the Marxist Irish National Liberation Army - Castro angered Britain by labeling their deaths "the most moving gesture of sacrifice, selflessness and courage one could ever imagine."

"Irish patriots are writing one of the most heroic chapters in human history," Castro said then. "They have earned the respect and admiration of the world."

In October, Adams flew to South Africa to meet former President Nelson Mandela and to witness the unveiling of a plaque to the Irish hunger strikers on Robbin Island - where Mandela had been imprisoned for decades for opposing apartheid.

This week, the Sinn Fein leader will visit Havana's Juan Manuel Marquez Pediatric Hospital and the Latin-American School of Medical Sciences. The Sinn Fein Party has a special interest in health issues - Sinn Fein's Bairbre de Brun is health minister in Northern Ireland's government.

The World Bank has judged Cuba's health care system as tops in Latin America in many categories.

Unionists in Northern Ireland said Adams' visit to Cuba proves he is a dangerous radical.

"Sinn Fein/IRA is a hard-line Marxist outfit that supports revolution," said Nigel Dodds of Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, which opposes the Northern Ireland peace process. "And Americans would be gullible in thinking anything else about them."

Adams was to have made the visit in early September, but postponed it after three Irish republicans were arrested leaving the jungle stronghold of Marxist rebels in Colombia in August.

The Colombian army claims the trio were giving bomb-making lessons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which the United States considers a threat to its regional interests.

Richard Haass, President Bush's special adviser on Northern Ireland, reportedly warned Sinn Fein in September that ties between the IRA and FARC could jeopardize Sinn Fein's highly lucrative fund-raising operations in America.

Sinn Fein originally denied any of the men, who remain jailed in Bogota, were Sinn Fein or IRA members. But Cuba identified one of them, Niall Connolly of Dublin, as Sinn Fein's longtime representative in Cuba.

After weeks of denying Cuba's assertion, Sinn Fein finally admitted that someone in the party had authorized Connolly to represent it. That admission came Oct. 23, a day when all other news from Belfast was eclipsed by the IRA's historic announcement that it had begun disarming.

While Adams' trip may ruffle some feathers in Washington, it also comes as U. S. relations with Cuba undergo something of a thaw. As such, it may not damage Sinn Fein's image in Washington as much as unionists hope.

Recently, in response to a Cuban request to buy $30 million in food aid as it recovers from November's Hurricane Michelle, the United States authorized its first shipments of food to Cuba in 38 years.

The first shipment of more than 26,000 tons of corn arrived here yesterday aboard a Mexican freighter out of New Orleans just hours after some 500 tons of frozen chicken parts arrived aboard a Liberian freighter from Gulfport, Miss.

The trade has been allowed under liberalized laws on food sales to Cuba.

Relations between the United States and Cuba remain far from smooth, however. Bush recently labeled Cuba as a terror-sponsoring state, and the United States last week gave life prison sentences to two Cuban intelligence officers convicted of spying on U. S. military installations in Florida.

* * * * *

Sinn Fein Leader Tours Cuba: Adams Urges Embargo End

by Jim Dee

Boston Herald

Tuesday, December 18, 2001

HAVANA - Stressing his reluctance to interfere in the affairs of other countries, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said yesterday he believes the United States should end its 40-year economic embargo of Cuba and open a dialogue with the socialist state.

"We in Sinn Fein have many good friends in the U.S.A.," said Adams, noting that presidents Bush and Clinton "have encouraged and helped the peace process back home" in Northern Ireland.

"At the same time," he added, "on a number of occasions I have expressed Sinn Fein's concern that there should be dialogue between the people of Cuba and the people of the U.S.A. - and that the blockade should be ended."

Adams spoke to reporters on the first full day of a trip that has been criticized by Northern Ireland's pro-British unionists and by some politicians in Washington.

Sinn Fein, which is allied with the Irish Republican Army, seeks to unify Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic. Adams is here primarily to thank Cuban President Fidel Castro for his steadfast support of both the party and the IRA during nearly 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland.

Adams will tour Cuba's state-run health care and educational facilities, which are free to its 11 million residents and have been touted as the jewels of Castro's revolution.

Last night he joined the Cuban leader at the reopening of a newly rebuilt school.

"The world has a lot to learn from the successes in Cuba, particularly in defeating illiteracy and in the provision of health care," Adams said earlier. His party holds the health and education ministries in Northern Ireland's Cabinet.

Admitting that calling for an end to the U.S. embargo may cause him "difficulties," Adams noted that Ireland's government has been advocating its removal for years "and Britain is in fact one of the main trading partners of Cuba."

In November, for the 10th year in a row, the United Nations General Assembly urged the embargo be ended. The vote was 167-3, with only Israel and the Marshall Islands supporting the United States.

The first U.S. food shipments to the island nation in 38 years - tons of grain and frozen poultry that Cuba was allowed to buy as it recovers from last month's Hurricane Michelle - arrived here Sunday.

Adams' first stop yesterday was to lay a wreath at the towering monument to Jose Marti - the 19th-century lawyer, poet and journalist, whom Cubans count as one of the nation's fathers.

Later, speaking of the U.S. embargo after a meeting with Communist Party official Jose Ramon Balagaert, Adams said it was striking "that people who live in such close proximity to each other and, who have so much in common, should be divided as they are at present."

Displaying his dry wit, Adams broke up the assembled Cuban and foreign press by adding, "Sinn Fein have never felt that we have the right to tell any other government - with the exception of the British government - what to do."

Adams today will unveil a plaque to the 10 Irish republican prisoners who died in 1981 on a hunger strike while protesting Britain's removal of their status as political prisoners.

He will also visit a jobs training facility. Cuba's unemployment rate is officially 4 percent, although Granma, the Communist Party's official newspaper, says it is twice that in eastern provinces far from Havana.

Adams has not been told whether he will meet with Castro today or tomorrow.

Tonight he will give the keynote address of his visit. He will meet Cuba's foreign minister and tour Old Havana tomorrow before heading home tomorrow night.

* * * * *

Adams Hails Cuban Support Of Irish Republican Efforts

by Jim Dee

Wednesday, December 19, 2001

HAVANA - Continuing a high-profile visit to Cuba that has infuriated Northern Ireland's pro-British unionists, Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams yesterday helped unveil a Cuban monument to 10 dead Irish republican prisoners.

They starved themselves to death in 1981 protesting Britain's removal of their political prisoner status.

About 150 enthusiastic onlookers and about 30 uniformed schoolchildren gathered to watch the small state affair.

Sergio Corrieri, president of Cuba's Institute of Friendship with Peoples, likened the hunger strikers to five Cubans recently sentenced to lengthy jail terms by a Miami court for spying on U.S. military bases in Florida.

"Just as the courageous Irish young people did in 1981, today five Cuban young people in the jails of Yankee imperialism face the irrational and pure hate of a government which has sentenced them to the most severe punishment," he said.

Cuba claims the men were trying to thwart anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who are planning terrorist attacks against Cuba.

Adams thanked Cuba for its longtime support of Irish republicanism. Cuban President Fidel Castro has reportedly pledged to Adams that Cuban schoolchildren will be taught the history of the 1981 Irish hunger strike.

Adams was well received by the locals.

Pedro Rodriguez, 65, said Adams's visit was "a magnificent event, which draws the two countries together."

Adams led the assembled schoolchildren in chanting "Viva Irelanda! Viva Cuba!"

He told the Herald that he knew some Irish-Americans may not approve of his visit here.

"But clearly, whatever people think about Cuba, and whatever may or may not be wrong in this country - and there are no perfect societies anywhere - the struggle is a very, very popular one," he said. "It could not endure for the time it has endured unless the people were involved."

He said that, "unlike Soviet bloc countries like Romania, where it was dreadful, what you see here is one of the best education systems in the world, which is free. One of the best health services in the world, which is free. And the abolition of illiteracy."

Adams welcomed American food aid to Cuba, which arrived over the weekend for the first time since the United States began its economic embargo of Cuba 40 years ago. Cuba was allowed to purchase the food to alleviate shortages caused by Hurricane Michelle last month.

He said "that, and the spirit with which the Cuban government condemned the September 11th atrocities and offered humanitarian aid to the families of the victims, I think, is a sign of what could be."

He said he raised the issues of "human rights, civil liberties, of religious rights, of democratic rights" in meetings with Cuban officials.

Five years ago, a United Nations motion condemning Cuba's human rights record was backed by all 15 European union countries. Relations began to thaw only this month after a Cuban-EU delegation meeting in Havana.

Yesterday's ceremony was attended by Cuban government officials and even a sprinkling of Irish people.

Pat Quinn of Galway, who just happened to be vacationing in Cuba when Adams arrived, said, "I'm glad Adams came here. The Cuban people have been friends of the Irish all through our struggle. Revolution is revolution."

There was even a Bostonian in the crowd. Caitlan Mathers of Brookline, Mass., is in Cuba on a cultural program. She said she didn't know much about Adams, but was curious about all the commotion and decided to attend the ceremony.

Mathers, 22, called Cuba "an incredible country with incredibly resourceful people. There's a human spirit I've never seen anywhere in my life."

She called America's economic embargo of Cuba "a ridiculous, huge embarrassment. It needs to end."

In the evening, Adams gave a major speech before the Institute of Friendship with Peoples where he lauded Cuba's accomplishments in health and education, and then had a closed-door meeting with Castro.

He will depart for Ireland tonight.

* * * * *

Adams Calls On U.S. To End Cuba Embargo

by Jim Dee

Thursday, December 20, 2001

HAVANA - Ending his four-day visit to Cuba yesterday, Sinn

Fein's Gerry Adams reiterated his call for the United States to end its 40-year-old economic embargo of the Caribbean island nation.

"Our support for the end of the blockade is well known," Adams told reporters. "I would very respectfully say to those in public life in the U.S.A. who support this position to come to Cuba to learn for themselves what has been accomplished."

The Sinn Fein leader yesterday toured Havana's Juan Manual Marquez Pediatric Hospital and warmly praised the medical treatment given there to children stricken with cancer.

He also held a lengthy meeting with Cuba's Foreign Affairs Minister Felipe Perez Roque, who labeled Adams' visit "a high honor" made all the more rewarding by Adams' "message of encouragement and solidarity to our country."

Perez Roque expressed hope that the recent U.S. shipment of food for victims of Hurricane Michelle would become "the first signal of an ongoing process, but I cannot be sure that this will be the case."

"Cuba does not harbor any hatred towards the United States," Perez Roque said. "Cuba does not hold the U.S. people accountable for our hardship."

He also said he hoped that "the last dinosaur that probably roams the Earth - which is the U.S. blockade of Cuba," will soon be extinct.

Adams' visit here, which began Sunday night, has been criticized by many of Northern Ireland's pro-British unionists, who say it proves he remains a hard-line revolutionary at heart. Likewise some in Washington have expressed displeasure at the trip. U.S. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a staunch Sinn Fein backer, has called it a mistake.

A key element of the visit, discussions with Cuban President Fidel Castro, were held away from the media glare late Tuesday night in one of Castro's private offices in central Havana.

The talks lasted six hours, stretching into the wee hours of yesterday morning, and covered a wide area, Adams said, ranging "from Third World debt, globalization, issues of social justice, democracy, socialism, and so on."

He said Castro was well informed about the Irish peace process and raised concerns about Britain's refusal to set up an independent inquiry into the murder of Patrick Finucane, a Belfast Catholic lawyer slain in 1989 by pro-British paramilitaries. The Finucane family alleges state involvement in the killing.

Adams said Castro talked of having some Celtic blood, saying the pair joked his name could have been "Fidel McCastro." Adams toured Old Havana yesterday afternoon to see the area's striking Spanish colonial-era architecture, the best preserved in Latin America.

While the area's impressive architecture is somewhat sullied by many buildings' faded concrete exteriors, about 10 percent of the buildings are being restored annually with the profits of the growing tourist trade.

Adams departed Cuba for Dublin last night.

Disarm Call Stuns IRA Stalwarts
by Jim Dee
Boston Sunday Herald, October 28, 2001

COALISLAND, Northern Ireland - The Irish Republican Army's decision last week to begin disarming for the first time in its history has stunned many of its supporters. In IRA heartlands, a debate now rages: Did the IRA buckle under pressure from pro-British unionists, or has it outwitted them yet again?

"The problem is: What did (Sinn Fein leader Gerry) Adams get in return?" said Jim O'Donnell, 67, who was jailed in the 1950s for his IRA activity, and whose Coalisland family is among many trying to come to grips with the IRA's seismic shift.

Nine years ago, his 21-year-old son, Kevin Barry O'Donnell, died in an ambush by elite British soldiers minutes after his IRA unit raked the town's heavily fortified police barracks with armor-piercing machine-gun fire. Three other IRA men, all under age 23, died with him. It's believed an informant tipped off the soldiers.

Of the 293 IRA volunteers killed in the conflict, County Tyrone's total of 53 IRA fatalities is higher than anywhere outside of Belfast. In all, 135 British soldiers and police also died in Tyrone.

The IRA's East Tyrone brigade was one of its most lethal. And, despite his youth, Kevin Barry O'Donnell was one of its top operatives. Ironically, he's buried beneath an IRA monument overlooking the police barracks he attacked before he died.

"I was shattered when I heard Barry was dead," said Jim O'Donnell. "But I know in my soul that Barry and the rest of the lads who died knew the chances they were taking. They were dedicated. They laughed at danger in the face and went ahead with what they were doing."

It is to families such as the O'Donnells that the magnitude of the IRA's move on weapons matters most.

"It was a total shock when I heard the IRA statement. It seems like they're throwing their hands up, conceding to unionism," said Kevin Barry O'Donnell's brother, Seamus.

"I'm proud of my brother and what he died for, and I would never turn against the IRA or the Sinn Fein leadership. But I'm hoping there is more from the British than what's being offered now," he said, referring to Britain's pledge to dismantle four of its 63 military installations in the North.

"If there's not, God help us," he added. "Giving up some arms dumps for a couple of watchtowers isn't a fair swap. The IRA has given far too much. It can't give anything more until soldiers are back in England where they belong, or there is a final date for British withdrawal."

Caoimhe (pronounced "Keeva") Hanna, Kevin Barry O'Donnell's sister, whose husband will benefit if Britain honors its pledge of an amnesty for IRA fugitives by March, is somewhat apprehensive about where the peace process will end up.

"At the start . . . I thought it was really good," she said. "Now I have mixed emotions. I'm glad to see we've given it a chance. But I'd be a wee bit worried about all these'ns that have been buried, and that what they did will be forgotten about. But I have faith in Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness."

The IRA's move saved the North's cross-community government from almost certain collapse, something which could have dragged 1998's Good Friday agreement and the peace process down with it. The IRA said the possibility of such a meltdown was the reason it acted.

Yesterday, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who a short time ago faced an uncertain future within his own party, won its backing to seek re-election in the Stormont assembly this week as first minister of the Cabinet.

"Sinn Fein - at the very death of Trimble and the death of Stormont - conceded," said Fergal O'Donnell. "I don't know where their priorities are. They are seen to be answering to Trimble. It seems like surrender."

Fergal O'Donnell said he's not a warmonger. And, if it takes "20 or 25 years" to see a united Ireland, he'll accept that - provided he knows the game plan.

"I'd like the leadership to be more open and let us know what their ultimate goal is. Is there a chance of a united Ireland, or are they just trying to bargain away for bits and pieces and never reach a united Ireland ? I don't like closed doors," he said.

But Jim O'Donnell insisted republican leaders have "wrung that much out of the Brits that if it was disclosed in the British parliament tomorrow, all the unionists and all the loyalists would react by forming a united front and set things back 30 years. Adams and company have got something, but they can't say it."

In February 1992, Kevin Barry O'Donnell's funeral saw riot police who were trying to prevent an IRA-style funeral first swamp the family's yard, and later the church graveyard where he was buried.

Such actions further embittered the family toward the 92-percent Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, a force Catholic nationalists have always considered the armed wing of unionism.

Unlike the North's other main parties, Sinn Fein rejects British police reform plans. After the IRA's disarmament announcement, Britain reiterated that it will consider meeting Sinn Fein's demand for amendments to its police reform legislation in a year only after a study of the implementation of the reforms is done.

Seamus O'Donnell says that's not good enough: "I have no faith in the police. It's still the same boys that used to threaten and harass you. They'll never be changed."

Jim O'Donnell believes Sinn Fein's leaders won't settle for the reforms Britain is offering "because they know rightly they can't sell that to me, or to the republican base. Negotiations are still going on, and republicans are getting things. And part of the upcoming police amendments will be written by Adams and Company."

Gerry Adams has confirmed that, contrary to some media reports, rank-and-file Sinn Fein and IRA activists weren't briefed in advance about the IRA's decision. Fergal O'Donnell resents such secrecy.

"Trimble and his party aren't afraid to say what their bottom line is," he adds. "Whereas nobody outside of a small clique of an inner circle of republicans really knows what's happening on our side. I hate hidden agendas."

But Jim O'Donnell believes, whatever their tactics, republican leaders won't sell out.

"Adams and Company have the right idea," he said. "They have accessed an international stage which we never had before. Britain always controlled the world's perception of this place. Now Sinn Fein can extract promises from Britain and make Britain stand by them."

Trimble Sees Peril Even As N. Ireland Enjoys prosperity
by Jim Dee
Boston Herald, Saturday, April 28, 2001

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The current "crisis" in the Irish peace process is now 6 months old, but Belfast is booming with the economic prosperity many predicted would underpin peace. Across the city and across the political divide from Springfield Road to Sandy Row, a frenzy of construction is transforming Belfast's face daily.

But David Trimble, the pro-British Ulster Unionist Party head of the North's government says people shouldn't be fooled by appearances: Trouble is indeed brewing in the Lagan River city.

"There is going to be a very serious problem in June if we don't get progress on the paramilitary front," he warned, referring to Irish Republican Army disarmament during an interview with the Boston Herald at his Stormont office.

"If we fail to get progress on the paramilitary front, that does have the capacity to cause a very real threat to the (peace) agreement," he said. "I don't want to talk up crisis, and I've been trying not to, but I can't avoid pointing out that there is going to be a big problem."

Although Trimble won't define the "problem," it's widely believed that if the IRA doesn't begin disarming by the end of June, the UUP will force Britain to suspend the North's Cabinet by threatening to withdraw from it.

In October, Trimble banned Sinn Fein's two Cabinet ministers from attending meetings of the peace-pact-created all-island North/South Ministerial Council because of the IRA's refusal to discuss disarmament.

He's appealing a January court ruling that his ban is illegal. And, despite the IRA's March re-opening of talks with the Independent International Commission on (Weapons) Decommissioning (IICD), he insists his ban has helped and will stay in force.

"Had I not done that, the process would have collapsed last October. That sanction kept things going," he insisted.

A final showdown on the issue isn't likely until after local government elections on June 7 - also the probable date of a British general election - which many commentators are billing as the most important elections in Northern Ireland's history. Some fear that expected gains by anti-peace accord unionists could sound the death knell of the crisis-plagued peace accord.

In February 1996, the IRA ended its first 17-month cease-fire over unionists' refusal to talk peace with Sinn Fein until the IRA disarmed. In February 2000, Britain iced the North's landmark Cabinet after only 72 days when the IRA again ignored UUP disarmament demands.

The government was re-formed last May when the IRA pledged to begin putting its arms "beyond use" in response to British policing and demilitarization promises.

Since then, the IRA has allowed IICD deputies to twice inspect a number of its hidden arms dumps. But the guerrillas insist Britain must move much further on Army demilitarization and police reform before they'll move further on disarmament.

Trimble scorned the IRA gestures, saying, "The steps that have so far been taken don't amount to anything of substance."

He stresses that he wants nothing short of the disarming and disbanding of not only the IRA but of pro-British paramilitaries as well.

"Both sets of paramilitaries are equally bad," he said. "And both of them are adopting the same attitude: Everybody else has to change but we can stay the same. We can still have our private army. We can still beat people up. We can still murder them."

Trimble brushed off the suggestion that attempting brinkmanship with the IRA, who've been in a cease-fire nearly four years, risks re-igniting the conflict, saying, "The process survived suspension in February of last year...the process didn't collapse then. We actually had progress coming out of that situation.

"So we may have considerable difficulty in June. But I'm not unhopeful of that actually again being a catalyst," he said.

He accused Irish republicans of living in "their own little mental ghetto," and warned again the IRA disarmament standoff "retains the capacity to destroy the progress we've achieved.

"I'm not talking up the risk element in this ... but, at the same time, I don't want people to be complacent," he said. "There has been a lot of progress ... but you can't say that this process is bedded in. You can't say that the situation is stable until we get the paramilitary problem sorted out."

Peace In Northern Ireland? Gerry Adams Stands By Old Convictions
by Jim Dee
The Montreal Gazette, Thursday, August 14, 1997

Belfast - With little more than a month remaining before Sinn Fein - the political party aligned with the IRA - enters peace talks in Belfast, doubts continue to dog the Irish peace process.

Will the IRA ceasefire hold? Will the IRA surrender its weapons? Will loyalist and Irish-republican splinter groups try to disrupt talks? Will Sinn Fein find anyone else at the talks table come Sept. 15?

To date, two of the three main unionist parties have quit the talks in protest against Sinn Fein's inclusion. The third - the Ulster Unionist Party, Northern Ireland's largest party - might leave if the IRA doesn't begin disarming when talks commence. Among republicans, two groups - the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), and the Continuity Army Council (CAC) - have condemned both the IRA's new ceasefire, and, indeed, the entire peace process.

Both groups have also indicated their attacks against the security forces will continue despite the IRA ceasefire

Between distrustful Protestant politicians, and dissident republicans sits Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, one of the architects of the peace process.

Born in 1948, Adams has never been far from the center of the storm. An agitator for Catholic civil rights in the 1960s, when the war erupted in 1969, he quickly emerged as a leader in the Ballymurphy section of west Belfast, an IRA stronghold. Since then, the British army alleges that Adams has, at different times, commanded the Belfast IRA, been joint over-all commander of the IRA, and been on the IRA's Army Council - its seven-member ruling body.

Adams has repeatedly denied all such allegations. He has never been convicted of any IRA offenses. However, the nature of Adams' connection with the IRA is irrelevant - the group clearly values his opinion. In 1972, the IRA demanded he be released from an internment camp - where he was being held without trial - to join an IRA delegation that was flown to London for secret talks with the British government. The British complied.

More recently, Adams' public call for the IRA to restore a ceasefire last month brought results within 36 hours.

"He was pretty low-key," recalled an ex-IRA prisoner who was interned with Adams in the early 1970s. "He wasn't bombastic, like some of the others. It was well known who he was, and he was well respected.

"As time went on, he tried to politicize people inside. He was pretty socialist at the time."

These days Adams' socialist rhetoric is more tempered. During interviews, he remains sharp. His gaze is steady and penetrating - each word carefully measured, in both meaning and intent. He is a shrewd political tactician and negotiator, and rarely lets down his guard.

When I interviewed him last week, two days before a large pro-republican march in Belfast, Adams answered critics like the CAC and the INLA by insisting peace talks are but another front in the struggle for Irish reunification, not a surrender. "We have to see negotiations as an area of struggle. We want an Ireland which is free and independent of Britain."

Drawing attention to a British army helicopter circling overhead during the interview, he added, "That helicopter hasn't left the skies here since the IRA cessation. British patrolling in national areas remains at the same high level. There needs to be a release of prisoners, and a whole range of dismantling - of decommissioning - of the whole apparatus of militarism which has been forced upon people here."

Adams argued that although the issue of IRA disarmament has grabbed world headlines, the continuing British military build-up has gone unchallenged. He cited a huge new army base in west Belfast, most of which was built during the IRA's previous ceasefire, as an example. The base, with its massive castle-like concrete-and-steel walls, dominates the landscape along the Springfield Road. "Most of that base on the Springfield is actually underground," Adams said.

"The British have treated this situation as a security situation," he added "So it's understandable, then, that you militarize, that you put in these big barracks, these big bases.

"If they start to deal with it as a political problem, then they have to deal with it in a different way. Then you're not dealing with terrorists, you're not dealing with insurgents, you're not dealing with gangsters. You're dealing with people who have rights, whose rights are being denied them."

Addressing calls by Protestant politicians for the IRA to surrender weapons during talks, as a confidence-building gesture, Adams said, "I think most people are thankful if the guns are silenced. That's my view. There are more licensed weapons in the hands of unionists than anyone else. I don't make a demand of them that they be decommissioned as some sort of pre-condition for negotiations, or during negotiations.

"I want to see all of the guns taken out of Irish politics - but not as a prerequisite for progress, or for negotiations."

Acknowledging that Protestants may walk out of talks if the IRA doesn't begin disarming, Adams said, "We want to see them there. They have a mandate to be there."

But, he added, if Protestants leave, "progress has to be made. And the two governments are committed to substantive talks on the core issues, and they should proceed with those."

Adams warned that if Protestants succeed in derailing talks over the issue of weapons disarmament, the results could be disastrous, "then, of course, the whole history of the last number of years becomes compounded, and rather than going forward into the future, we end up slipping back into the past. And that should be, and must be, avoided at all costs."

Asked what role the IRA would play in the future, Adams answered, "Well, that's a matter for the IRA." But, he added, IRA volunteers differ from professional soldiers. They have been housewives, students, farmers, people who "don't have a military career, but who actually decided for whatever reason to take up armed actions in order to do what was done in the States years ago - to kick the British out."

He said he would expect members of the IRA to have a "useful positive role to play as individuals in reconstructing, and being part - with the rest of the Irish people - in reconstructing a type of society which will reflect the diversity and uniqueness of the people of this small island."

But any transformation, Adams said, depends on the resolve of British Prime Minister Tony Blair to reach a just settlement.

"Will Tony Blair be the British prime minister who makes history, and help bring that about? We'll see."