Sinn Fein - no objections to no party meeting

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams today said his party would not have any objections to the idea of a meeting involving all the parties supporting the Good Friday Agreement in a bid to bolster the peace process.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams today said his party would not have any objections to the idea of a meeting involving all the parties supporting the Good Friday Agreement in a bid to bolster the peace process.

However, he said it was important not to loose sight of the fact that it was the British government who was in default of the Good Friday Agreement over its policing reforms and plans to normalise security in Northern Ireland.

Speaking in West Belfast before leaving for talks in Dublin with the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Mr Adams said: "To bring people together in a round table format is fair enough but the issue still is will Mr Blair tackle the whole policing crisis?

"I don’t want to go into the whole detail of that but one of the issues this morning is the whole of inquiries. Is the (policing) board going to have proper powers to instigate inquiries?

Is the Ombudsman going to have the power to have retrospective inquires?

"Is the British government and those other inquiries outside the policing debate, whether it be the Pat Finucane case, the Rosemary Nelson case or the Robert Hamill case, is the British government going to have an independent series of inquiries into those killings?"

The West Belfast MP denied claims that the British government could not amend its police legislation before the next general election, noting they had a sizeable majority in the House of Commons which would enable it to do so if it wanted.

He said he did not believe the nationalist SDLP was in a position to endorse policing structures because none of the demands it had made publicly had been met by the government.

The Sinn Fein president also criticised suggestions that the Ulster Unionists would disrupt a North South Ministerial Council meeting next week in Armagh as part of its sanctions against Sinn Fein.

"You shouldn’t underestimate the decision of the First Minister (David Trimble) to arbitrarily rule that the Minister for Education and the Minister for Health are unsuitable," he said.

"You shouldn’t underestimate that in terms of the psyche of what has happened here for a very, very long time.

"So any advance on that, any ratcheting up of that ratchets up the deeply offensive insult that Republican and Nationalists feel that the First Minister should behave in such a way."

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