Gerry Adams was set yesterday to urge British Prime Minister Tony Blair to accelerate the withdrawal of troops from republican strongholds of Northern Ireland, the Sinn Fein leader said on Irish television.
Adams and Martin McGuinness, his No. 2 in Sinn Fein, the political wing of the militant Irish Republican Army, were to meet Blair in Downing Street along with Northern Ireland police chief Hugh Orde.
It's the first face-to-face meeting between Orde and the Sinn Fein leaders.
"This is a crucial meeting in which we will be expecting Mr. Blair and his chief constable to deliver for us on demilitarizing republican heartlands," as promised in a joint London-Dublin agreement last year, Adams said on RTE public television on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, Adams received a phone call from US President George W. Bush, who offered to mediate in the Northern Ireland conflict.
Bush had on Friday called Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, which supports continued British rule in Northern Ireland, to make the same offer.
"I thank president Bush for his interest. I briefed the president on Sinn Fein's objectives in the current negotiations," Adams said on efforts to get a power-sharing agreement between the Catholic and Protestant groupings in the British province back on track.
"These are to get the DUP [the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party] on board for an agreement and to ensure that the British government position remains faithful to the power-sharing, equality-based and all-Ireland institutions contained in the Good Friday agreement," he said.
"I told him we may need the help of the White House" to secure these, added the leader of the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which has been resisting efforts to disarm following the 1998 Good Friday peace accords.
Adams said he did not expect the US government's new special envoy for Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, to return to Northern Ireland at this stage.
Reiss was in Northern Ireland in February for his first visit, on the eve of what were expected to be months of talks to revive the province's self-governing Assembly and executive, suspended since 2002. The UK, Ireland and Northern Ireland's political parties have been working to revive the power-sharing government that was intended to end three decades of sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics.
The institutions, created under the Good Friday peace accords in 1998, were suspended in 2002 following a crisis triggered by allegations of IRA espionage targeting Protestant politicians.
The DUP never embraced the Good Friday pact, having refused to compromise with Sinn Fein.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS