 It has proved to be a very expensive St Patrick’s Day for Gerry Adams. A ban on fund-raising, imposed as a visa condition for his trip to the US, has forced Sinn Fein to repay $100,000 (£57,000) in ticket sales for a gala breakfast he attended in Washington.
The Sinn Fein president is clearly bitter about what he described as a “partisan” decision by President Bush’s Administration which, he said, took no account of the IRA’s renunciation of armed struggle and the progress made on decommissioning. “I don’t understand why I’m allowed to go to London for fundraising but not come here,” he told The Times at a subsequent event for the American Ireland Fund.
| Maybe because we don't quite believe you? |
The US, where up to 45 million people claim Irish descent, has always been regarded as the (Irish) Republicans’ cash cow and for more than a decade Mr Adams had enjoyed being fêted on his high-profile annual trip to the White House. But last year he was removed from the invitation list for the President’s shamrock ceremony because Mr Bush was angry over the IRA’s involvement in the Northern Bank robbery and the continued paramilitary violence that led to the murder of Robert McCartney.
This year, the Sinn Fein leader was allowed back into the White House. But he was not asked to a private, more intimate, meeting with Mr Bush. Instead, the President once again chose to spend time with Mr McCartneyÂ’s sister, Catherine, and other victims of IRA violence. These included Esther Rafferty whose brother, Joseph, was allegedly murdered last April, and Alan McBride, whose wife was killed in the Shankill bombings a decade ago.
| Bush has a tendency to keep accounts. If he makes a move like this it seldom is for transient show ... |
Mr Adams sought to make light of the $100,000 bill for his trip and the frosty reception he had received from the President. “At least I got a free breakfast,” he said. “Look here, Washington comes and Washington goes — but the Irish-Americans have remained constant and they have kept their faith in us.”
| A woman in my neighborhood has a '26 + 6 = 1' bumper sticker. I'm hoping she's not as gullible as she once was. |
But the income that Sinn Fein receives from the Irish-American lobby has fallen to less than $1 million a year. Donations to the respectable and charitable American Ireland Fund dropped by more than a quarter in 2004. | I'm sure 'unofficial donations' are still high. |
Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary who also travelled to Washington for St Patrick’s Day, believes that the mood — even on “green emotion” days such as this — shifted irrevocably because of the September 11, 2001, attacks. “What has changed is terror and that has changed minds, he said. “Sinn Fein had been treated as heroes on Capitol Hill for years with republicanism intertwined is some minds with the American War of Independence.” Although he did not want to be drawn into the row over Mr Adams’s right to raise money in the US, he suggested that last year’s St Patrick’s Day snub for Sinn Fein had a profound effect.
Mr Hain has held talks with Mr Bush, as well as Mitchell Reiss, the President’s special envoy on Northern Ireland, and Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, over plans due to be unveiled next month for restoring powers to the devolved Stormont Assembly, which was suspended in 2002. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Ulster Unionists still want to delay, he said, while the nationalists “want to jump back in; we need to find a bridge between them”. A proposal for phased reintroduction appears most likely.
“We’re now entering the most important period since the Good Friday agreement in terms of people having to make their minds up,” he said. But Mr Hain also emphasised that the US remained a central component in the peace process. |