Sinn Féin told it must commit to politics
He said Sinn Féin could not deny IRA involvement in last month’s Northern Bank Robbery in Belfast.
Earlier Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said the Irish and British governments would be moving on to dangerous ground if they discriminated against his party following the €32 million raid.
But Mr Ahern dismissed these assertions out of hand, saying Sinn Féin could not adopt the attitude “that they are innocent in all of this” by denying IRA involvement in the robbery.
He told RTÉ the core issue was that the party must decide if it is going to be committed to politics.
“We need an end to the criminal acts associated with the IRA. It’s quite well known, particularly in Border areas, that leading IRA members have been involved with criminality ... That’s what is holding back the implementation of the principles of the Good Friday Agreement,” he said.
Speaking on the BBC’s Breakfast with Frost programme, Mr McGuinness said that in the absence of evidence implicating the IRA in the robbery, any move to discriminate against Sinn Féin would move them on to dangerous ground that “would clearly send a message to many nationalists and republicans that politics doesn’t work”.
In a fresh rebuttal, he said if the IRA had been involved, it would have “been a defining moment in Sinn Féin’s leadership work with the IRA”.
“I would not have stood for it. It would have been totally and absolutely unacceptable to me,” he added.
He went on to say that he couldn’t see how the IRA would agree to be involved in such a risky operation which would have undermined the republican contribution to the Northern peace process.
The SDLP’s Seamus Mallon yesterday argued there was a section within the IRA which was opposed to devolution, particularly the prospect of the republican movement becoming part of new policing arrangements in the North. And he warned of Sinn Féin and the DUP looking for arrangements that could lead to “Balkanised situations, with two sectarian silos catering for their own constituencies”.
Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte said yesterday that the comments of Mr McGuinness almost amounted to a threat.
“I would not like to think it’s a threat. I accept that it sounds like a threat. I would remind Martin McGuinness that if it is a threat, he is threatening the Irish people, not just the Irish Government,” said Mr Rabbitte.
Fine Gael also condemned the Mid Ulster MP’s remarks. A party spokesman said they “will do nothing to restore Sinn Féin’s credibility nor will they do anything that can change the widespread acceptance that the IRA was involved in the Northern Bank Robbery”.
