The McCartney sisters emerged from a meeting with United States President George Bush on Thursday claiming to have his ”100% support” for their quest to bring their brother’s killers to justice.
The meeting, at the St Patrick’s Day reception, lasted only a few minutes and the family decided not to hand over a dossier on Robert McCartney’s murder outside a Belfast bar in January as they had planned. They blame the murder on the IRA, and have called for charges to be brought against 12 people they say were responsible. ”We decided it would be best to talk to him personally because we knew he was meeting a lot of other people,” Catherine McCartney said, adding that the family might still seek to deliver the file to the president’s office.
”We impressed upon the president the importance of getting justice for Robert and he said he was 100% behind our campaign.”
Paula McCartney added that the president had said ”how sorry he was for what happened to Robert … he seemed quite confident — he obviously knows things we don’t — that things will change”.
The White House encounter was the highlight of the family’s five-day American tour aimed at bringing Washington’s influence to bear on Sinn Féin to persuade witnesses to the murder to come forward.
Their campaign has damaged Sinn Féin’s standing in Washington and brought calls from the administration and Irish-American senators for the IRA to be disbanded and for Sinn Féin to sever all ties with it.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was not invited to the White House reception and went instead to a meeting of the US Friends of Sinn Féin in a Washington hotel ballroom.
He told a crowd of about 200 cheering supporters: ”We who would not allow the British government to criminalise us, will also not allow any rogue elements on the fringes of republicanism to criminalise our struggle. On the issue of armed groups, deal with them we will.” But he did not say when or how.
McCartney’s five sisters and his partner Bridgeen Hagans piled on the pressure on Thursday, making appearances on many television news channels.
They queued with dozens of Irish-Americans for half an hour to pass through White House security. At one point during the reception, they said they went outside for a smoke and then found they were barred from going back in for several minutes until their identity was checked once more.
Catherine McCartney dismissed claims being spread by Sinn Féin in Belfast that their campaign was being orchestrated by the party’s political enemies.
”Would they be saying the same if it was six men? We do know a little about politics,” McCartney, a politics lecturer, said. The White House meeting had been organised through the US consul in Belfast, and the sisters had found contact numbers for Senator Edward Kennedy and other prominent politicians on the internet.
Their tickets were paid for in part by an unnamed solicitor, whom Catherine McCartney said ”has no political affiliation but an interest in justice”. Money for taxis in Washington had been donated by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
She said that her family had historically been Sinn Féin supporters, but her disillusion began to set in 18 months ago.
”There was a rapist in the community, and they didn’t do anything about it. [Robert’s] murderers all met in his house after the murder,” she said.
She had decided not to stand for election in Belfast. ”If you run for office, you have to deal with an awful lot of issues. We want to deal with just one issue — Robert.”
Paula McCartney, however, has yet to decide whether to run for office. She said that after leaving Washington on Sunday, the family would bring their campaign back to Ireland before heading to Europe.
Also in Washington, Northern Ireland’s chief constable, Hugh Orde, refuted claims by Sinn Féin that his detectives had refused to interview a suspect and were deliberately holding back on the investigation in order to damage republicans.
”We are very clear on who our suspects are,” he told RTE. ”We need the people who saw the crime to come forward.” Any suggestion that his force was manipulating the investigation to damage Sinn Féin was ”rubbish”.
It emerged on Thursday that after weeks of frostiness and finger-pointing between the Irish government and Sinn Féin, Bertie Ahern had met Gerry Adams in his hotel in Washington.
It was the taoiseach’s first meeting with the Sinn Féin leadership in weeks.
After the meeting, Adams said the peace process was in ”serious difficulties” and he would be meeting the taoiseach again.
Ad-libbing during his speech to the Ireland Fund gala dinner, Ahern said: ”Quite frankly I’m getting old, I’m getting grey, I’m getting tired, I’m getting frustrated.” – Guardian Unlimited Â