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Statement on IRA's future expected this week

Posted on: Wednesday, 27 July 2005, 07:57 CDT

By Jodie Ginsberg

DUBLIN (Reuters) - The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is expected to issue a statement on its future by the end of this week, after a series of steps believed to set the scene for the Northern Irish guerrillas to give up their arms.

"I do genuinely believe that we are within days of seeing an enormous change in the situation," Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said on Wednesday.

Contacts intensified between Sinn Fein -- the IRA's political ally -- and the British and Irish governments this week following a weekend report that three senior Sinn Fein politicians had stepped down from the IRA's ruling Army Council.

That would pave the way for major structural changes in the Catholic, pro-Irish IRA, which fought a bloody, three-decade campaign against British rule until a cease-fire in 1997. Sinn Fein has asked the IRA to give up its weapons for good.

Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell identified the men who stepped down as Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, chief negotiator Martin McGuinness and Irish member of parliament and convicted gun-runner Martin Ferris. They have always denied belonging to the Army Council.

McGuinness traveled on Wednesday to the United States, traditionally a source of support for the IRA and Sinn Fein, adding to the speculation an IRA statement was imminent.

Speaking to reporters in Dublin before his departure McGuinness declined to comment on the timing or content of an IRA statement, or on McDowell's remarks.

"The IRA have clearly indicated that they are involved in work. We need to give them space to complete that work," he said. "Gerry Adams and I have resisted getting into any speculation about these matters."

KICK-STARTING TALKS

Sinn Fein called on the IRA in April to end its armed struggle after a series of high-profile crimes, such as the murder of a popular local man, caused international outrage.

A big bank raid in December last year and the murder of Belfast man Robert McCartney, both blamed on IRA members, has put Sinn Fein under intense pressure to disband the paramilitary group and incurred harsh censure from traditional allies.

Leading Irish American politicians snubbed Adams during his visit to the United States for Patrick's Day in March.

Any statement is expected to help kick-start stalled talks on the province's political future, although resolution is still seen as a long way off given traditional enmity between pro-British Protestants and pro-Irish Catholics.

Talks on reviving an assembly, set up under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and in which Catholics and Protestants together ran the province's affairs, broke down at the end of last year.

Dublin and London say IRA crime is scuppering progress.

Sinn Fein's main opponents, the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party, refuse to sit in government with the Catholic party until the IRA publicly disarms.

Although the bombs and shootings that claimed more than 3,600 lives during the "Troubles" have largely ended, violence in the province persists in "punishment" beatings, stabbings and killings as communities try to control their own members.

Source: REUTERS

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