Gerry Adams Blasts Rep. Hyde

Gerry Adams, leader of Ireland's Sinn Fein political party, defended his decision to boycott a congressional probe into Colombian terrorism on Wednesday. He also accused American lawmakers of undermining the defense of three Irish Republican Army suspects being held on Colombia.

Adams said advance details of a report being published by the House Committee on International Relations contain "allegation, innuendo and rumor, lots of qualifications, caveats and conditions, but nothing to back them up."

Adams specifically criticized the committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., for calling two Irishmen being held without bail in Colombia IRA weapons experts.

"(T)hese hearings are prejudicial to their clients," Adams said. There was no immediate response from the congressional committee or Rep. Hyde.

The trans-Atlantic argument preceded a two-day hearing in Washington into possible links between Colombia's major rebel organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and group such as the IRA.

But two of the Irish nationals - arrested last August while traveling on false passports, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley - have IRA-related convictions and have been identified by British and Irish anti-terrorist police as an experienced IRA weapons makers. Adams initially denied, then confirmed, that the third suspect — a Havana, Cuba-based Irish aid worker named Niall Connolly — was Sinn Fein's representative for Latin America.

The committee's advance findings seem to dovetail the British report, calling Monaghan and McCauley "the IRA's leading explosives and mortar experts" and saying they were suspected of helping FARC rebels "in developing new urban warfare capabilities."

Adams said he believed Hyde had organized the hearing partly in response to pressure from Britain.

The IRA is observing a 1997 cease-fire after killing more than 1,800 people in a 27-year campaign designed to abolish Northern Ireland, a Protestant-majority state linked to Britain. As part of the territory's 1998 peace deal, Sinn Fein holds two seats in a 12-member administration.