Yes, this is about right.
Regards, Ivan
Posted on 03/05/2003 11:23:16 PM PST by MadIvan
Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, will not be permitted to shake hands with President George W Bush or visit the Oval Office during next week's St Patrick's Day celebrations at the White House.
The decision was taken after the Farc, a Colombian narco-terrorist group, used its training from the Provisional IRA to launch a campaign of urban bombing and began to target Americans.
A defence contractor working for the US Army was murdered and three more taken hostage by the Farc last month after their single engine Cessna plane crashed in the jungle 200 miles south of Bogota.
The Bush administration now considers combating the Farc to be a part of the war against terrorism, a shift in strategy that by extension makes the IRA and Mr Adams designated enemies of the United States.
Although the failure of the Northern Ireland parties to reach a deal on restoring devolved government will be publicly cited as the justification, a key reason for freezing out Mr Adams is the IRA's links with the Farc.
Last year, Mr Adams was among a group of five party leaders photographed with Mr Bush in the Oval Office along with Bertie Ahern, the Irish premier, and John Reid, then Northern Ireland Secretary. This year, there will be no photograph and no contact between Mr Adams and Mr Bush.
"That's my understanding of how it's been set up," said Pat Kelly, spokesman for the Irish Embassy in Washington. "The White House basically envisaged it only if a deal could be done."
Three alleged IRA members, including James Monaghan, an explosives expert who was photographed beside Mr Adams at a Sinn Fein conference in 1989, are currently being tried in Bogota on charges of training the Farc's recruits.
A senior US defence official said: "The Farc is using very sophisticated car bombs, mortars and remote controlled devices that have been developed with the help of European terrorist groups such as the IRA and ETA.
"They've activated a plan to shift to urban terrorism. Their attacks are now even more indiscriminate than before. They really don't care who they kill.
"The Farc has also been increasingly targeting Uribe [Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president] - 12 times this year. And it has been deliberately targeting Americans. The whole thing is a package, a completely new approach."
After lobbying from the Pentagon and pressure from Congress, the Bush administration has allowed money from budgets for the war against terrorism to be allocated to Colombia.
"Including Colombia in the global war against terrorism changes priorities and makes it easier to give them [the Colombian government] certain assets," said the senior defence official.
Last month Thomas Janis, 56, a former Delta Force soldier, and Sgt Sgt Luis Alcides Cruz, of Colombian military intelligence, were shot dead at close range after the Cessna crash landed.
Mr Janis and the three contractors, also former soldiers, taken hostage were working on electronic surveillance of coca fields, source of 90 per cent of the cocaine smuggled into America. The Farc declared them "gringo CIA agents". So far, a search operation, including the use of around 100 US Special Forces troops, has failed to locate them.
"We don't know much but I'm afraid they are now out of the box where they were captured," said the defence official. "We know how they are but not where they are. One may have been bitten by a snake and this could be very bad news."
Jeremy McDermott in Medellin writes: A renegade guerrilla, John Alexander Rodriguez Caviedes, 19, claims to have video and photographic evidence to prove that he was taught to build bombs and fire rocket launchers by the three alleged IRA men on trial in Colombia. Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan were arrested in August 2001 as they stepped off a plane from a Farc stronghold in the south of the country.
Yes, this is about right.
Regards, Ivan
I didn't know that .. Thank you for the info
Make that two federal laws Clinton broke (Regarding Adams, that is. The total number of federal laws broken by Tubby is still being calculated). But that was the price to get Ted Kennedy's full bluster in defense of the Clinton crimes.
Bush had his picture taken with him in the Oval Office.
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