Irish Republican News · March 22, 2005

SF working towards IRA disbandment - Adams

Disbanding the Provisional IRA “is easier said than done”, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has told a US audience.

Adams said Sinn Fein was not the “political wing” of the IRA, a routine allegation in the mainstream media, but allowed that “the two elements draw water from the same well” in terms of their political direction.

Amid an unprecedent media attack on Irish republicanism, a number of politicians and political commentators in the US and Ireland have urged the IRA to unilaterally disband in recent weeks.

Speaking to an audience of several hundred at John Carroll University in Ohio on Friday, Mr Adams said “one of the objectives of Sinn Fein is to bring about conditions that bring about the end of the IRA”.

The only way for that to happen, he said, was to keep working at the peace process. Adams received a standing ovation after his 15-minute-long remarks.

On Monday, the Sinn Fein president suggested that any unilateral move to disband by the Provisional IRA could boost breakaway groups such as the ‘Real IRA’.

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Mr Adams said people wanted to see the IRA leaving the stage “and I think the best way for the IRA to leave the stage is in a dignified manner that prevents any recurrence of another IRA growing up alongside.”

US Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman Peter King have called for IRA disbandment following international media controversy over the death of Belfast man Robert McCartney in a bar fight in which IRA members were involved.

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