IRA considers Adams' plea

The IRA tonight was considering whether its armed struggle could continue after Gerry Adams’ appeal for the organisation to fully embrace politics.

The Provisionals confirmed they were giving due consideration to the Sinn Féin leader’s appeal for them to pursue their goals through politics.

And as they embarked on a process of sounding out IRA members the length and breadth of Ireland, Mr Adams denied claims that his call yesterday was motivated by the desire to increase Sinn Féin’s vote in the general election.

“There is never a good time,” the Sinn Féin leader said. "This is about leadership. It is about trying to give leadership in difficult circumstances. The thinking had nothing to do with elections.”

Mr Adams was at pains to stress tonight that his message to the IRA that there was now an alternative to armed struggle was a unilateral move to leapfrog over the problems in Northern Ireland’s peace process.

Since the collapse last December of efforts to revive power sharing at Stormont involving Sinn Féin, the Reverend Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists, David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists and Mark Durkan’s SDLP, Mr Adams acknowledged there has been poisonous political atmosphere.

Republicans, in particular, have been criticised over the £26.5m (€38m) Northern Bank robbery in Belfast last December and the January 30 murder of father of two Robert McCartney outside a city centre bar.

With the IRA also accused of carrying out other robberies, hijackings, black market smuggling of tobacco and oil and profiting from sales of counterfeit goods, political opponents on both sides of the border have claimed the organisation’s true nature is more like the Mafia.

In making his appeal to the IRA yesterday, Gerry Adams and his supporters would like the IRA to conclude an internal debate on its future in time for a new set of negotiations, possibly in the autumn.

Mr Adams urged political opponents to give his efforts to overcome the problems in the peace process a fair hearing.

However, unionists remained sceptical today, with Democratic Unionist Assembly members querying whether the Sinn Féin leader’s statement was just words or whether there was any real substance to it.