<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110911102620961269,00.html>
The Wall Street Journal
February 23, 2005
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Irish Eyes Wide Shut
February 23, 2005
The decade-long peace process in Northern Ireland was premised from the
start on a political decision to overlook the links between the Provisional
Irish Republican Army and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA in both
the Republic and Northern Ireland. Through that process, Sinn Fein's
leaders in the North, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness -- the latter an
admitted (former) member of the outlawed IRA -- had won themselves seats in
Northern Ireland's currently suspended power-sharing assembly, and Sinn
Fein had made headway in North and South alike.
But like a thread that, when pulled, unravels a sweater, a $50 million bank
robbery in the North at the end of last year has led to the roll-up of a
IRA-linked money-laundering and smuggling ring that spans both sides of the
partition line. The investigation, still under way, has laid bare the
extent to which the IRA has continued to operate as a criminal racket even
while observing an eight-year-long cease-fire. And this past weekend, the
thread received another tug as members of the government in the Republic
accused Messrs. Adams and McGuinness of sitting atop the IRA's power
structure.
Yesterday Paul Murphy, the U.K.'s Northern Ireland secretary, announced
that Sinn Fein's four elected members of the British Parliament --
including Messrs. Adams and McGuinness -- would lose their Parliamentary
expense allowances in light of the evidence of IRA involvement in the
heist. The measure is hardly draconian, especially since Sinn Fein's MPs
refuse to take an oath of loyalty to the queen and so do not actually sit
in Parliament. But the expense accounts, worth some $750,000 a year, have
considerable monetary and symbolic value.
So far, Mr. Adams & Co. are putting on brave faces, insisting that they
will "weather" the political storm. It would be hard to discount that
possibility entirely, given how long Sinn Fein has -- more or less
successfully -- played its double game of speaking for the IRA while
maintaining a semblance of political legitimacy. With St. Patrick's Day
less than a month away, U.S. President George W. Bush could give the string
another tug by disinviting Sinn Fein from the White House's traditional St.
Paddy's party. It's time Sinn Fein's welcome mat was rolled up.
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experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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