DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - Senior figures in Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party, left Wednesday for the United States ahead of an expected major new peace declaration from the outlawed IRA.
The British, Irish and U.S. governments have been pressing since December for the outlawed IRA to disarm fully and disband in support of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord. The pact's key goal - a joint Catholic-Protestant administration for the British territory - has been hold since 2002 because of Protestant refusal to cooperate with Sinn Fein, the major Catholic-backed party.
The British and Irish governments both expect the IRA to release a new policy statement soon, perhaps on Thursday, outlining its intentions. Both governments insist the IRA must disarm fully and renounce violence and criminal activity - commitments the IRA has refused to give in the past. Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness and the party's North American representative, Rita O'Hare, were planning to meet supporters in the Congress and President Bush's envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss.
In a sign of recent U.S. pressure on the Sinn Fein-IRA movement, O'Hare in February was barred from traveling into the United States - the first time that happened since she became Sinn Fein's senior U.S.-based lobbyist in 1998. O'Hare has been on the run from British justice since the early 1970s in Northern Ireland, where she absconded on bail while awaiting trial on charge of attempting to murder British soldiers.
| Lovely lass, perhaps we can hold her for the Brits? |
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