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.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS