Adams to meet Irish American supporters

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams will today meet Irish American supporters a day ahead of the Irish and British governments’ deadline for responses to their plan for restoring power-sharing at Stormont.

The West Belfast MP left for the United States yesterday for a round of meetings with key Irish Americans and will also take part in a fundraising dinner in New York for his party.

Mr Adams had previously been barred from fundraising by the US government because of his party’s failure to support the police in the North.

The brief visit to the US was being viewed as encouragement by President George Bush’s administration for Sinn Féin to change its policy on policing in the wake of the St Andrew’s roadmap for devolution.

US Congressman Martin Meehan, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was due in Belfast today for a two-day visit in which he will meet community and business leaders as well as politicians.

His visit precedes the arrival next week of a delegation of US congressmen from the Friends of Ireland Group including Congressmen Richard Neal and Jim Walsh.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair want Northern politicians to indicate by tomorrow whether they will follow the timetable for devolution proposed at last month’s St Andrews’ talks.

Paisley’s Democratic Unionists have yet to formally declare their hand but have been arguing that the St Andrew's proposals are an advance for unionism on the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Sinn Féin on Monday gave its qualified backing to the plan but on the key issue of policing Gerry Adams’ party was unable to move by calling a special conference because it insisted it needed more progress on a date for the transfer of justice and policing powers from Westminster to a future Stormont department.

The DUP has insisted Sinn Féin must publicly endorse the PSNI and encourage their supporters to report crime to officers if it is to be a credible partner in a power-sharing government next March.

Mr Paisley’s party has held four internal consultation meetings and has also invited unionist voters to give it their verdict on Mr Ahern and Mr Blair’s proposals.

The SDLP, which has said it will not stand in the way of the revival of power sharing, will meet Mr Ahern in Dublin today.

A party spokesperson said SDLP leader Mark Durkan and his colleagues would be insisting both governments needed to ensure there would be no blockages to the restoration of the political institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.

They were also expected to raise concerns about proposed changes to the way devolution will operate.

The Ulster Unionists today published a four-page insert in The Belfast Newsletter highlighting concerns about the St Andrews’ Agreement and accusing Mr Paisley’s DUP of trying to spin what had been negotiated.

UUP leader Reg Empey argued that the DUP had actually signed up to the fundamental tenets, framework and institutions of the Good Friday Agreement.

“The DUP stood on the platform of first smashing the agreement, then of changing it,” the East Belfast assembly member argued.

“They have failed in both. For all their charges of sell out and accompanying hellfire and brimstone speeches over the years, they have not changed the agreement.

“To spare their blushes there are some detailed alterations to the workings and implementation but many of these are not for the better.

“This paper will explain what some of these changes mean but we will leave the DUP to explain their pro-agreement conversion to their own supporters.”