The Irish Republican Army said on Thursday it was giving ”due consideration” to an appeal from its political wing Sinn Fein to fully embrace politics and abandon its armed struggle in Northern Ireland.
”The leadership of the IRA was given notice of the appeal by Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams,” said the Catholic paramilitary group, which has waged a lengthy and often bloody campaign against British rule in the province.
”We have noted his comments. The IRA will give his appeal due consideration and will respond in due course,” it said in a brief statement, signed, like all IRA communiqués, with the moniker ”P O’Neill”.
In unprecedented remarks on Wednesday, Adams — whose party is running candidates in the May 5 general election in Britain — said he had supported the IRA in the past because there had been no choice.
But he added that today ”there is an alternative”, as he acknowledged that international public opinion had swung against the IRA over its alleged criminal activities.
The IRA is accused of carrying out a spectacular pre-Christmas bank robbery in Belfast last year, and of shielding IRA members suspected of killing a Belfast man during a pub brawl at the end of January.
The IRA rose to prominence in the 1960s as it waged an armed struggle against British rule in Northern Ireland, where many Catholics favoured the province’s unification with the Irish republic.
It has observed a ceasefire since July 1997, a year before the Good Friday peace accords — supported by Sinn Fein — that largely ended three decades of sectarian strife. — Sapa-AFP