Ireland's justice minister launched a blistering attack on the Sinn Fein-IRA movement, accusing its leaders of lying repeatedly and deepening divisions within Northern Ireland.
Michael McDowell's 3,000-word statement Thursday sought to dissect decades of Irish Republican Army policy -- and explain why the IRA is lying now about robbing the Northern Bank in Belfast, the biggest cash theft in history.
Earlier Thursday, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, a reputed IRA commander, repeated his denials of IRA involvement in the Dec. 20 robbery and criticized the Irish government for not believing him.
But McDowell said the IRA had had a lengthy track record of denying, then eventually admitting, responsibility for bombings and deadly robberies at politically sensitive moments. He quoted previous Adams denials that proved false, and said he was certain that senior Sinn Fein leaders also commanded the IRA -- and negotiated about ending IRA activity at the same time they were planning the latest, 26.5 million pound (US$50 million) robbery.
"Does any sane person believe that the IRA or Sinn Fein would now acknowledge that it had carried out the Northern Bank robbery?" McDowell said. "Sinn Fein and the IRA have lied repeatedly about criminality when it suited them."
Widespread acceptance that the IRA committed the raid has dealt serious damage to efforts to revive a Catholic-Protestant administration, the key goal of the Good Friday peace accord of 1998. Sinn Fein has grown in recent years to become the north's top Catholic-backed party.
But Protestant leaders increasingly argue that the IRA should have fully disarmed and disbanded by now as part of the deal. They are lobbying the governments of Britain and Ireland to back a new arrangement that would allow Protestants to share power instead with moderate Catholics from the Social Democratic and Labour Party.
In Belfast, Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble -- a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who led a previous power-sharing coalition that collapsed in 2002 -- said Sinn Fein and the IRA "only offer more process, not completion, and have repeatedly refused to reform themselves."
Trimble said Britain should not offer Sinn Fein "yet another `final' chance." Instead, he said, Britain and other parties should "draw a line under current experiments and go back to the basics of the [Good Friday] agreement."
The government of Prime Minister Tony Blair warned it planned to impose unspecified punishments on Sinn Fein if the IRA didn't come clean about the Northern Bank raid and promise to end all activities.
During past crises in Northern Ireland's peace process, Sinn Fein has been able to count on support from the Irish government -- but McDowell signaled this would no longer be the case. He said the IRA was still committing and threatening violence.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS