Sinn Féin call for summit on Assembly elections

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern was urged yesterday to call a special summit with his British counterpart Tony Blair and demand that Northern Ireland Assembly elections be held this autumn.

Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the current impasse in the peace process was unacceptable to republicans. When people voted for the Good Friday Agreement they did not vote for direct rule, he said in Co Cavan at the unveiling of a monument to IRA captain Edward Boylan. “That is what we have now, direct rule and political drift with the institutions so painstakingly constructed now in suspension at the behest of anti-Agreement unionism. A British government which falsely boasts that it is a champion of freedom on the international stage had twice cancelled democratic elections in Ireland and four times suspended the institutions established under the Good Friday Agreement.”

Assembly elections had been scheduled for May but were postponed by the British government. Mr Ó Caoláin said, despite requests for the poll to be held in the autumn, there was no sign the British government was prepared to do this. “I call on Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to arrange a special summit meeting with Tony Blair to discuss not whether, but when this autumn the elections will be held. The Taoiseach’s mandate from the Dáil is to accept no less from Tony Blair.”