Street violence must be addressed - Adams

Sectarian violence on the streets of Belfast must be addressed by the British and Irish governments and parties who support the Good Friday Agreement, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said today.

As parties gathered at Hillsborough Castle for the second meeting of the Good Friday Agreement implementation group, Mr Adams claimed the recent disturbances in interface areas should be the top priority.

Flanked by party colleagues Michelle Gildernew and Gerry Kelly, the West Belfast MP said: "We have called for some time for a very robust stocktaking of the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and I hope that is what we are going to see.

"I don’t want to rehearse all of the litany of issues that need to be dealt with but you know that they reflect all aspects of the Agreement right across constitutional, institutional, political, economic, social issues and the issues of policing, demilitarisation and so on.

"But I think that the pressing issue of the pro-Agreement parties and particularly the two governments must be the deteriorating situation particularly in interface areas of Belfast.

"We hear last night of an attack in Antrim town, so I think that has to be one of the objectives that we set ourselves here today - to use our influence to end the beleaguered situation for people living in small communities along the interface."

Mr Adams added that Sinn Fein had expressed consistently its opposition to all sectarian violence - especially attacks on nationalist communities such as the Short Strand in east Belfast.

Sinn Fein joined the Ulster Unionists, SDLP, Alliance Party, the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party, and the Women’s Coalition at today’s meeting which was being chaired by the Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid and Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who has claimed ongoing IRA activity is endangering the Agreement, did not attend.

Instead, Stormont environment minister Dermot Nesbitt and Assembly member Ivan Davis were representing the UUP.