Adams dismisses calls for IRA disbandment
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams today dismissed demands for the immediate disbandment of the IRA as wishful thinking.
Mr Adams, who was due to meet Tony Blair in Downing Street for crisis talks later today, is under intense pressure to declare that the IRA is at an end in order to rescue the peace process.
He said that Sinn Fein wanted to see the end of all armed groups, including the IRA.
But he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "Making a demand that it happen by Christmas is a bit like wishing for Santa Claus."
He also warned that calls to suspend the power-sharing administration in Stormont would not help bring about the eventual disbandment of armed republicanism.
“How on earth can they hope to achieve that objective by tearing down the political architecture which was put in place to achieve that and other objectives?” he said.
He said that Sinn Fein has been concentrating on bringing about the eventual disbandment of the IRA through the peace process.
Republicans are being accused of plunging the peace process in crisis by operating a spy ring at the heart of Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid’s offices in Belfast.
In the another interview with BBC Radio Ulster, Mr Adams that said removing armed groups from society was “a laudable and necessary objective of this process”.
He went on: “I have said to republicans time out of number that a product of this process – and there are lots of other objectives, lots of other issues that need to be resolved, from policing through to demilitarisation, to the equality issue, the human rights issue, the stability of the political institutions and people’s national and political rights – but amidst all of those the objective of bringing an end to all of the armed groups, including the IRA, is one which this Sinn Fein leadership has been pursuing for some time.”
Mr Adams was expected to come under pressure from Blair to get the IRA to abandon all paramilitary activity as the clock ticked on the Ulster Unionists’ ultimatum for the gvernment to put a motion to exclude Sinn Fein ministers to the Northern Ireland Assembly early next week.
Mr Blair was expected to tell Sinn Fein that republicans could not go down the path of democracy while also pursuing the path of violence.
Mr Adams, whose party insisted it had several questions to ask the British government about the arrests of four people and raids which triggered the current political crisis, would not be drawn on why there was a need now for the IRA.
“You know as much about Irish history and about our contemporary situation as I do,” he said.
“We deal and we live in the objective reality of Ireland today.
“I could take your time up with a long spiel about partition which is a great indignity and an immoral act against the people of our island, about the British involvement in Ireland. But I won’t.
“The Good Friday Agreement was a considerable compromise for a party like ours and for those people who support us.
“We want to see the process working. How do you think we can get rid of all of the armed groups by abandoning the political structures which were put in place to achieve those objectives?”
Mr Adams added: “What I will advise Mr Blair this morning is that he should not be suspending the institutions, that the crisis is one that the Ulster Unionist Party planned for next January.
“Remember, they decided to withdraw from the institutions, they decided to withdraw from the Policing Board, they decided Sinn Fein should be excluded from the Executive and they decided that the North South Ministerial Council should cease to function.
“But I will defend our position and the integrity of our mandate but when Mr Trimble ceases jumping up and down, when Mr Blair and I meet, when all of the different parties have had their say, then we have to start putting this together again.”
