February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The Sinn Fein chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, speaking at his party’s weekend ard fheis in Dublin, said that the current stalemate is a “crisis, a dangerous crisis,” and that he was pessimistic about the ongoing review of the agreement.
“We can be certain of one thing: It will not lead us out of the current stalemate. It was not designed to deal with a crisis in the agreement,” he said. “But it is not a crisis that began one week ago outside a bar in Belfast. It is not a crisis around the IRA or IRA intentions.”
McGuinness was referring to the attempted kidnapping of a dissident republican, Robert Tohill, allegedly by the IRA, which has sparked the latest crisis. The incident took place on Friday, Feb. 20, when four men in boiler suits and balaclavas beat Tohill in a Belfast pub and bundled him into a van. The attack was caught by a security camera. Shortly afterward, acting on a tip, police intercepted the van and arrested four men.
McGuinness said Sinn F