LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Sinn Fein: Northern Ireland
built 654 days ago
Getting Sinn Fein on the policing board would effectively mean the end of the IRA, because it would amount to acceptance of the legitimacy of the police in Northern Ireland... removing justification for the IRA's existence. The republican prohibition against any people from its community joining the police would be lifted.
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On February 26, Sinn Fein held its annual Ard Fheis [conference] in the Mansion House, Ireland's first parliament, at which over 500 delegates voted in support of the IRA cease-fire of September 1. At this conference it was agreed to hold a special national conference in the near future to decide Sinn Fein's strategy towards the framework document agreed by the British and Irish governments.
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In 2005, the murder of Catholic Robert McCartney and the raid on Belfast’s Northern Bank were utilised to press Sinn Fein towards its decision later that year to disarm the IRA and suspend all its activities. Nevertheless, subsequent efforts to revive the assembly have stumbled over Sinn Fein’s reservations over supporting the PSNI—the partially reformed replacement for the notorious Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), which played such a key role in British imperialism’s occupation of the North. The PSNI is formally committed to recruiting as many Catholics as Protestants.
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Gorman is quite mistaken in believing that the Howard Government will suffer a political backlash if it takes a similar attitude to Sinn Fein as the US. There was no backlash whatsoever when Howard snubbed Adams in 1999. And since then, a more critical assessment of Sinn Fein/IRA has been evident in Australia, Britain, Ireland and the US. Right now, despite the peace process, Adams leads a discredited organisation.
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The signs are, though, that Sinn Fein's fortunes in the Irish Republic are about to improve. Next week, in the first southern parliamentary elections since the current Northern Ireland peace process began, Sinn Fein looks likely to profit electorally from the IRA's ceasefire. The latest polls suggest that the party headed by Gerry Adams and former IRA commander Martin McGuinness will win about 4 per cent of the poll, enough for between three and six seats in the next parliament - perhaps even enough to hold the balance of power in southern Ireland's coalition-prone lower house.
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[T]he most widely reported evidence of the treachery of Sinn Fein was the recent bank robbery in Belfast when £22 million was stolen by an IRA gang. During the raid, the robbers took over two houses and held families hostage as two Northern Bank employees were ordered to help in the operation to clear the vaults. Police believe the stolen money was taken to a yard in West Belfast’s Grosvenor Road area, transferred to another vehicle and driven away for storage, possibly in an underground bunker.
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