Adams out in cold as US embraces McCartney family

SINN FÉIN’S political isolation reached a low point last night as Washington embraced the family of murder victim Robert McCartney.

The five sisters and partner of the murdered Belfast man arrived in Baltimore airport to a rapturous welcome yesterday evening.

At tomorrow’s St Patrick’s Day reception in the White House, their presentation of a dossier on Robert’s murder to President George W Bush is expected to form a high-profile centrepiece that will clearly show where Mr Bush’s sympathies lie.

In marked contrast, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, in the US since Sunday, has been frozen out by the US political establishment during his week-long visit.

As they prepared to travel to Washington DC from New York and Boston last night, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern also delivered stark messages to the republicans to end all criminal activities.

“There is simply no room for such destructive behaviour in any political dispensation in Northern Ireland,” the Taoiseach said in Syracuse, New York.

It came amid mounting evidence that the level of republican co-operation with the murder investigation has been almost non-existent. Reliable sources said the only statement received by the police ombudsman’s office is the list of suspects given by the McCartney sisters to Gerry Adams a fortnight ago.

Sinn Féin’s insistence that it is fully behind the family’s campaign suffered a further blow when it emerged two of its candidates and a former councillor were in Magennis’s bar on the night of the murder on January 30. All belatedly made statements to their solicitors.

Mr McCartney’s sister, Catherine, was scathing of the account given by Assembly candidate Cora Groogan.

“Initially Sinn Féin’s response was that she left the bar at 8.30pm. Then they came back with the statement that she left at 11pm and saw nothing,” she said.

Meanwhile, it emerged republican paramilitaries are suspected of being involved in six punishment shootings and nine assaults so far this year. The figures show there have been no incidents since February 28. The comparable figures for loyalists are 11 shootings and 13 assaults.