‘Childish’ Adams urged to respond to governments’ challenge

BERTIE AHERN last night challenged Gerry Adams to respond to issues put to him by the Irish and British governments.

The verbal exchanges between the Government and Sinn Féin continued unabated yesterday in the wake of the Independent Monitoring Commission’s report stating that the Republican leadership sanctioned the €38 million Northern Bank robbery. The Taoiseach described Mr Adams’s demand that he be arrested if he were involved in the bank raid as “childish” and also referred to the IRA’s tactics of abducting people “off the side of the street.”

Speaking in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia last night, Mr Ahern repeated that there are still three outstanding issues:

* The end of criminality by the provisional IRA.

* The decommissioning of arms.

* Moving on with trust and confidence.

“The best one that would be able to help that trust and confidence is Gerry Adams, and when he responds to the governments on the issues put to him several weeks ago, that will help,” Mr Ahern said.

Hitting back at Mr Ahern’s accusations of him advocating IRA activities, Mr Adams said yesterday that PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde did not even say that Sinn Féin was involved in the bank robbery.

Prior to his departure for a two-day visit to Bulgaria and Poland, Mr Ahern said serious events had happened he had no intention of arresting the Sinn Féin president. “Thankfully, the law doesn’t allow me to arrest anybody. I’m not going out to arrest Gerry Adams. He can rest assured about that. One thing we don’t do in our kind of party is go around picking up people off the streets. Other political people do that,” he said.

Aside from meetings with the Bulgarian president Georgi Parnanov and prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg, Mr Ahern was honoured by the Bulgarian state yesterday. The Taoiseach was presented with the Order of Stara Planina, the country’s highest honour for a foreign national, in recognition of his contribution to Europe.

Today, Mr Ahern travels to Poland to meet with Prime Minister Marek Belka in Warsaw and he will also receive an award from Polish business leaders.