Sinn Fein Leader Calls for Talks With Britain, Ireland

LONDON —  Irish republican leader Gerry Adams, president of the Sinn Fein political group, called Tuesday for direct, unconditional talks with the British and Irish governments on their plan for peace in Ulster.

Adams said last week’s Anglo-Irish declaration on a framework for peace in Northern Ireland could be “the beginning of the end” of 25 years of violence in the troubled province.

In separate responses, the British and Irish governments reiterated their joint position as set out in the peace declaration: They will only talk with Adams’ Sinn Fein, which is the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, three months after violence in Northern Ireland ceases.

Adams’ first formal response to the peace initiative was punctuated by a series of bomb threats from the IRA against commuter rail lines into London.

No explosions occurred, but the threats disrupted rail traffic into the British capital and caused chaos among thousands of commuters.

The bearded, bespectacled Adams warned at a West Belfast news conference that building a peace process will be “difficult, dangerous and protracted.”

“We have never set deadlines,” he said. “We have never said that building a peace process will be easy. There (have) been, and there will be, attempts to create confusion.”

He maintained that the British and Irish governments have made contradictory statements on the major issues--from national self-determination to the Unionists’ right to veto amnesty for IRA prisoners.

The largely Protestant Unionists want Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain; the largely Roman Catholic republicans favor unity with Ireland.

“There is a need for clarification. There is a need for direct and unconditional dialogue if we are to move forward on all these issues,” Adams said, adding that the peace declaration “certainly isn’t the end. . . . We want to make it the beginning of the end.”

He said his party is committed to a “meaningful” peace negotiation and is examining the peace declaration.

For his part, the Rev. Ian Paisley, a staunch Protestant Unionist, dismissed the Sinn Fein leader’s statements as “rank treachery.”

Adams indicated he had not yet made personal contact with the IRA about the peace process.