Raid was political plot, says Adams

SINN FÉIN president Gerry Adams claimed yesterday that the raid on his party’s Stormont offices last week was a plot to throw the peace process into crisis.

Mr Adams said the roots of the current crisis could be traced to the police chief who made the decision to raid the party's office.

He said there were still elements in the new Police Force of Northern Ireland who were trying to escalate division within unionism over the peace process.

Mr Adams also reiterated the party's denial that its officials were involved in any intelligence-gathering activities and have initiated legal action to take back property seized in the police raids.

Mr Adams said the decision to raid the offices was taken at Belfast level and not by Northern Secretary John Reid, or by the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Hugh Orde.

"This is clearly politically motivated but I think it goes further than that. I think it's a set-up. The question of who's doing the setting up can be traced to whoever took the operational decision to raid the Sinn Féin offices," he said.

"I think there is a rump of the old RUC which still prevail in the executive position of the police service and I think they are behind this... if you want to get the bottom of this, find out who took the decision over the timing of this, the nature of this and the style of this."

He claimed that these elements of the PSNI have been active in the so-called interface areas in Belfast over the summer where they had tolerated loyalist attacks on Catholic homes.

Mr Adams said he now "understood completely" the reservations in the unionist camp and that the pressures placed on the parties were part of a carefully choreographed raid.

Sinn Féin has also launched a legal challenge to recover the two computer disks taken from its Stormont offices during last Friday's controversial police raid.

Mr Adams said the material seized by the police from the party's office included a floppy disk and a CD-ROM.

This material has not formed part of the charges against the individual at the centre of the controversy. "Does anyone think we're so stupid that at such as sensitive time in the process we would have information like this in an open office.

"I have no problem if you want to look at those floppy disk. Sinn Fein has nothing to hide on this issue," he said.

However, Mr Orde said the disks were still being analysed and will be returned if they contain nothing incriminating.

Mr Adams said that the parties had to concentrate on how to piece the process back together as there was no alternative.

"When the dust settles, whether it's in the short or slightly longer term, all of this has to be put back together," he added

We have to respond to his there's no way away from this. The future has to be about the future it can't be about a return to what we just dragged ourselves out of."