From: "Stasi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Peoples War] Ireland: RIRA Offer Peace For Prisoners - Sunday Times http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/ 21.10.01 Real IRA offers peace in return for prisoners ============================== Liam Clarke and Chris Ryder THE Real IRA (RIRA) has made an approach to the Irish government suggesting it will end military operations in return for the release of its prisoners. Among the 30 RIRA suspects in Irish jail is Michael McKevitt, its alleged leader. His incarceration is thought to have partly motivated the move to negotiate prison releases with the Irish government. The request for a meeting was made through a priest in the past fortnight. At the same time stories were leaked to newspapers predicting that the RIRA might "call a ceasefire". It had called a ceasefire shortly after the Omagh bombing in 1998 when it murdered 29 people with a car bomb. This ceasefire has since been so flagrantly breached that it has now become meaningless. The Irish government has so far rebuffed the RIRA's approach. It sees no need to deal with a group whose word cannot be trusted and which is falling apart after being infiltrated by informers. Government officials said that it would be foolhardy to take the RIRA at its word. "The fear would be that they would return to violence once they got the prisoners out," said one official last week. Morale has been low in the RIRA since McKevitt's arrest. He is facing charges of membership of an illegal organisation and directing terrorism. McKevitt is remanded in custody in Portlaoise jail where, according to other inmates, he is finding prison life unbearable. His wife Bernadette, the sister of Bobby Sands, an IRA prisoner who died on hunger strike in 1981, is said to have been behind the approach to the Irish government. According to dissident republican sources, there have been periodic contacts between the RIRA and the Irish government for at least two years. The Continuity IRA was also approached some time ago by a priest suggesting that it attend a meeting with Martin Mansergh, the taoiseach's special adviser, but it declined. The British government had contacts more than a year ago, but broke them off because, as one official put it, "they were too warlike and there was nothing to talk to them about and nothing to engage about politically". The RIRA move is seen by other republicans as born of desperation. The group was duped by an MI6 sting operation in Slovakia and has suffered many arrests. The RIRA's problems leave it in a poor position to exploit any internal differences within the Provisionals following an act of decommissioning. Last July the IRA made a decision, in principle, that the army council could decommission weapons and it is now manoeuvring for the best possible moment to do so. The IRA leadership can argue that little will be lost by decommissioning arms dumps inspected last year by Dr Martti Ahtisaari, the former Finnish president and Cyril Ramaphosa, the former African National Congress leader, because they are already compromised. According to security sources in Britain and Ireland, garda officers acted as go-betweens and escorts in facilitating the inspection of the dumps. The two inspectors were appointed by the British and Irish governments in May last year as a confidence-building measure. Soon after they visited the dumps, they released a statement saying that they contained "substantial" quantities of arms and munitions. Ramaphosa is expected to return to Ireland to verify that the IRA has at last started to decommission its weapons. He has been on standby for more than a week, amid mounting expectation that the IRA is on the verge of filling at least two of its arms dumps with concrete. A key condition is that David Trimble, the former first minister, must state that he is willing to operate the power-sharing executive and the cross-border institutions. Last week Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, said: "There is no possibility of the IRA doing anything unless, for example, David Trimble was prepared to commit himself to sustaining and working the institutions." Yesterday Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein MP, continued to talk up the prospects of decommissioning. In a BBC interview, he spoke of working "flat out" to secure the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement, including IRA decommissioning. McGuinness said he would continue to do so into this week - a broad hint that he thinks his efforts will bear fruit within days. He called on Trimble to match his efforts and "face down" the anti-agreement wing of his own party. "We want to see a situation where these people who are within the political leadership of unionism, who tell us that they are in favour of the Good Friday agreement, will at long last embrace that agreement wholeheartedly," he said. McGuinness's statement will have caught the ear of John Reid, the Northern Ireland secretary, who is expected to decide tomorrow whether to suspend the executive. Trimble wants a suspension to give him time to sell any decommissioning gesture to his Ulster Unionist party. David Ford, the new leader of the Alliance party of Northern Ireland, added his voice to the calls for loyalist and republican terror groups to begin decommissioning. At Alliance's annual conference in Belfast yesterday, Ford said: "There is a clear need for both loyalists and republicans to deliver." _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
