Bush prejudiced against Irish.

[Eidolon Faer]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... wstop.html

I'll never deal with Adams again, says Bush
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 13/03/2005)

President Bush personally ordered that Gerry Adams be frozen out of official engagements during his visit to America, furious that the Sinn Fein leader had betrayed his efforts to help to re-start the Northern Ireland peace process.

Mr Bush now views Mr Adams in the same unfavourable light as he did Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian leader, a senior presidential adviser said last night. "At the White House, Adams is now regarded with the same sort of disdain as Arafat," the adviser told The Telegraph. "The President no longer considers Mr Adams a reliable partner for peace. He doesn't want to meet him."

Mr Bush was enraged to learn that at the same time as he was pressing Mr Adams late last year to relaunch the power-sharing deal, Sinn Fein's armed wing, the IRA, was planning the £26 million Northern Bank raid in Belfast. He had telephoned both Mr Adams and Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionists, in an attempt to persuade Northern Ireland's two biggest parties to resume the stalled peace negotiations.

Mr Bush's displeasure has forced Mr Adams to abandon plans to raise money while in America. The United States government made it clear that it would not grant him a visa that permits fund-raising, this newspaper has learnt. Sinn Fein had claimed that Mr Adams had chosen not to raise money "to avoid it being made into a contentious issue''. In reality, he was told not even to bother applying for the appropriate paperwork for the week-long visit, which began in Ohio yesterday. American officials are also demanding major concessions from Sinn Fein, most significantly that the IRA be disbanded.

"It's hard to understand how a European country in the year 2005 can have a private army associated with a political party," said Mitchell Reiss, the US envoy for Northern Ireland.

Mr Adams was invited to a St Patrick's Day reception at the White House by President Clinton in 1995 and given permission to start raising funds three years later. While he and other Irish political leaders are not on Mr Bush's guest list for St Patrick's Day celebrations this Thursday, significantly the President will welcome the sisters and fiancée of Robert McCartney, the Catholic man murdered by a gang of IRA thugs in January.

When he visited Northern Ireland in 2003, Mr Bush welcomed the efforts being made by Mr Adams and fellow political leaders. "They've signed on to a process that will yield peace," the President said.

Mr Bush's snub by will be a financial blow to Sinn Fein, as Mr Adams is the party's star turn in America and had been expected to raise large sums on his tour.

For decades, Irish republicanism has been a source of strain in Anglo-American relations as successive British governments have tried to persuade Washington to clamp down on IRA fundraising in the US. As prime minister, John Major was so angry when President Clinton first granted Mr Adams a visa in 1994 that he refused to take his telephone calls.

[Partha]

This is one thing I'll applaud Bush for doing.

[SicTimMitchell]

Ian Paisley is at least as bad as Gerry Adams.

IRA, UDA, same difference.

[vaulos]

Just to be fair, Ted Kennedy did cancel his meeting with Adams first.

[Aabe]

Just to be fair, Ted Kennedy did cancel his meeting with Adams first.

BAH! he had a hangover. =P

[Aabe]

Just to be fair, Ted Kennedy did cancel his meeting with Adams first.

Actually it would be nice if every politicain on the hill irrespective of party ignored this guy. Not make it a partisan issue.

[Relbeek Einre]

That appears to be the case, actually. Gerry's poison now.

[Torakus]

That appears to be the case, actually. Gerry's poison now.

Hillary will have to see him since Bill will continue to see him and support his fund raising as he did while President of the United States.

Tora

[Relbeek Einre]

Thanks for your input, Tholiak.

[Eidolon Faer]

There was another article in the NYTimes yesterday that provides a few more interesting tidbits. I especially like the part about him inviting Robert McCartney's family instead of Gerry Adams to the White House. It's a nice touch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/inter ... land.html?

Sinn Fein Leader Plays Down Snubs From Bush and Kennedy
By WARREN HOGE

Published: March 15, 2005

Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, arrived yesterday in New York on his annual St. Patrick's Day trip to the United States, and played down snubs from the White House and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the party's most prominent supporter in American politics.

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, Mr. Adams said it was a disappointment not to be going to the White House, as he had in recent years, but cautioned against reading too much into it.

President Bush has canceled the traditional White House gathering of leaders of the political parties of Northern Ireland and invited instead the six women from the family of Robert McCartney, who have been leading vocal protests over his killing in January in a Belfast pub by a group that included members of the Irish Republican Army. Sinn Fein is the political wing of the I.R.A.

"Do I interpret that as a movement by this administration away from the peace process?" Mr. Adams said. "No, I don't. This will not be worked out in the White House, this will not be worked out here," he said, referring to the council. "This will be not be worked out anywhere else except back on the island of Ireland."

Mr. Kennedy, Democratic of Massachusetts, canceled a meeting with Mr. Adams scheduled for later this week in Washington, and a spokesman explained that he had taken the action because of the I.R.A.'s "ongoing criminal activity and contempt for the rule of law."

In reaction, Mr. Adams said: "Sinn Fein has worked closely with him in the past. On this occasion, we believe that he has been badly advised."

Complicating Mr. Adams's trip this year to corral the support of Irish-Americans are recent instances of criminal activity by the I.R.A. that have prompted demands that Sinn Fein shed or disband the guerrilla force. Aware of the unease in Washington this year, Mr. Adams did not seek the visa he normally does that would allow him to raise funds.

Mitchell B. Reiss, Mr. Bush's special envoy on Northern Ireland, said: "It's time for the I.R.A. to disband. There's no place in 2005 in Europe for a private army associated with a political party."

Conceding that Sinn Fein had been thrown "on the back foot," Mr. Adams said he hoped the I.R.A. would disband but warned that forcing it to do so in humiliating fashion ran the risk of creating a more radical replacement. "No one wants the I.R.A. to go back to war, and in my view people want to see the I.R.A. leaving the stage in a dignified way," he said.

A longtime Sinn Fein backer, Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he would warn Mr. Adams that he risked his American support "if the republican movement becomes so diminished that instead of a nationalist organization, you have morphed into the mob."

Another Sinn Fein backer in Congress, Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, said: "For the peace process to go forward and for Sinn Fein to have the input that it deserves, it is time for the I.R.A. to stand down. There is no constructive purpose being served at this time by the continued existence of the I.R.A."

Representative James T. Walsh, another New York Republican and the head of the Congressional Friends of Ireland, said he would keep his date with Mr. Adams because "I think it is essential that we talk to him."

"I don't think people should be shutting him away," Mr. Walsh said. "But our concern is that the acts of the I.R.A., alleged and admitted, are damaging the peace process, and I want him to know that Americans are thinking that."

[SicTimMitchell]

Yet the UDA has been allowed back into the process, despite the fact that they (and their factions, same as IRA factions) were the first ones to break the ceasefire after the Good Friday accords.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/1569237.stm

Where are the calls from the U.S. for the UDA, UFF and LVF to disarm and disband?

There are two terrorist factions in Northern Ireland. And with Ian Paisley as Northern Ireland's PM, there's not a lot of hope for the Good Friday accord which he virulently opposed in the first place.

[SicTimMitchell]

Actually, I'm wrong. I remember Paisley being elected in N. Ireland after years of being an MP, but it was to the assembly.

Since then, he has apperently retired, but the UDP is still his party.

[SicTimMitchell]

And here's Condi Rice expressing concern that the UDP took so many seats.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/11 ... index.html

[Ddrak]

The UDA may be as bad, but that's a separate issue. Historically US support has been for the IRA and not the UDA, so the President shunning the IRA is an amazing improvement. I agree the UDA needs similar shunning, but I see this as one step forward.

The less the Irish terror organizations get US cash and US defacto support, the better. /applaud Bush.

Dd

[Relbeek Einre]

The McCartney issue is a dodge, by the way. Bush had resolved to snub Adams well before that incident.

Gerry Adams may deserve a snub, but I don't like the bullshit that's surrounding it - particularly the unequal treatment of the UDP.

[Partha]

The UDP is no bed of roses, but the IRA has them beat in the public stupidity category right now.

I say this as someone with Irish blood in their body: the IRA hasn't been anything worth my respect for a good decade. They're a European Crips now.

[Relbeek Einre]

Still, it's stinky. This McCartney thing was, essentially, a bar brawl gone wrong. We get thirty of those in the Twin Cities every year. It's being politically exploited. And since the UDP is just as bad, if not worse, to snub one and not the other smacks of selective labeling of terrorists for the purposes of pandering to the British government.

[Aabe]

Still, it's stinky. This McCartney thing was, essentially, a bar brawl gone wrong. We get thirty of those in the Twin Cities every year. It's being politically exploited. And since the UDP is just as bad, if not worse, to snub one and not the other smacks of selective labeling of terrorists for the purposes of pandering to the British government.

Heh heh, well if you are going to pander, the Brits have been standing by us in Iraq, might as well be them.

[Torakus]

Still, it's stinky. This McCartney thing was, essentially, a bar brawl gone wrong. We get thirty of those in the Twin Cities every year. It's being politically exploited. And since the UDP is just as bad, if not worse, to snub one and not the other smacks of selective labeling of terrorists for the purposes of pandering to the British government.

Yes but Big Brother is alive and well in the Twin Cities. A bar brawl with Big Brother watching from his new Eye in the Sky on every Minneapolis street corner, will never again go unprosecuted.

I also heard Minnesota, the midwest bastion of free liberal thinking and democracy, was considering a State Motto change to something like "Nous vous observons".

Tora

[Relbeek Einre]

Thanks for your input, Tholiak.