February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
McGuinness’s scheduled Wednesday meeting with U.S. special envoy Mitchell Reiss at the State Department comes at a time when the Bush administration has emphasized the need for the IRA to perform further acts of decommissioning and seriously initiate dissolving the IRA as an armed force.
“We await concrete actions by the IRA to support the policy advocated by Mr. Adams,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said this week in a prepared statement, referring to the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams.
“Respect for the rule of law is an essential element of the democratic society that Mr. Adams has outlined. We strongly endorse this vision and once again call for all paramilitary activity and criminality to cease.”
There is conservative optimism that actions of just that description will take place soon.
Ambassador Reiss and other Bush administration officials have repeatedly mirrored the vow made by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern that no meaningful negotiations will take place unless substantial acts are performed by the IRA and can be verified. Unless he anticipates having insignificant negotiations, Reiss must be anticipating some breakthrough, as he is now expected to be on the ground in Northern Ireland for meetings following the May 5 British elections.
Such anticipation might be warranted. Sinn Fein hurriedly put together a program for this week’s two-day trip by McGuinness.
“We received a request for a meeting just yesterday [Monday],” said one congressional official on Capitol Hill.
Sinn Fein is anxious to reconcile with some American politicians who distanced themselves from the party after a string of recent missteps by republicans, including the killing of Robert McCartney in Belfast earlier in this year.
McGuinness will follow his talks with Reiss with a meeting with several sympathetic congressional members at the office of Rep. Richard Neal, the Massachusetts Democrat.
“It is time for the volunteers of the IRA, who fought with such courage and determination, to enter the next stage of the process with the same zeal they fought for freedom from British rule,” said Rep. Joseph Crowley, the New York Democrat, who endorsed Adams’s speech last week calling for new “alternatives.”
And efforts to repair one of Sinn Fein’s most important relationships in Washington has also commenced.
Last month, Sen. Edward Kennedy refused to meet Adams because of the McCartney murder and allegations over republican involvement in the Northern Bank raid in December and a broad money laundering operation in the Republic.
Now, four weeks later, and following Adams’s appeal for IRA members to lay down their arms and become political activists rather than armed volunteers, Kennedy’s office will find time for McGuinness, although it won’t be with the senator.
“[Sinn Fein] requested a meeting for Martin McGuinness with our staff and it’s been arranged,” a Kennedy spokeswoman said.