Gerry Adams Says "No" To U.S. Probe

Irish nationalist Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Tuesday he would not attend a U.S. congressional hearing into alleged links between his party's Irish Republican Army ally and Colombia's FARC guerrillas.

Adams, who travels regularly to the United States to raise funds for his IRA-linked party, last month was invited to explain to Congress, at a scheduled Wednesday hearing, why one of his party's representatives was among three IRA suspects arrested last August in Colombia.

The U.S.-backed government there has accused the trio of training left-wing guerrillas in the manufacture of mortars and car bombs, which are being used with increasingly devastating effect in Colombia's 38-year-old civil war.

But Adams said Tuesday that the IRA had denied all involvement in Colombia. He argued that to attend the hearing would be insensitive to "the plight of the three men presently in detention in Colombia, their right to a fair trial and the anxieties of their families."

In a letter to the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, Adams said he was also concerned the issue was being used to undermine Sinn Fein's contribution to Northern Ireland's peace process to end three decades of Protestant-Roman Catholic conflict.

He said he believed the arrests were being used as part of a "wider agenda" in South America, where the United States is keen to combat drug trafficking and could beef up military aid.

"For all these reasons, and also following legal advice ... I feel compelled to respectfully decline your invitation to testify," Adams said.

The Sinn Fein president told a news conference in Belfast he had offered to meet the congressional committee when he was next in Washington. But a party spokesman told Reuters this was unlikely to be before October.

Washington has labeled FARC -- left-wing rebels heavily involved in the drugs trade and waging a 38-year-old war against Colombian authorities -- a terrorist organization.

Proof the IRA -- which is party to Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday peace deal and has held a cease-fire for most of the past seven years -- had been helping the group could raise awkward questions for Sinn Fein in Washington where in recent years the party has gained readier access to policy makers.

By rejecting the invitation, Adams was hoping to minimize further damage to his party's support among conservative Irish-Americans. U.S. supporters have made Sinn Fein the best-financed party in Ireland since then-President Clinton lifted a fund-raising ban in 1995.

The three men - James Monaghan, Martin McCauley and Niall Connolly - have been held without bail since their arrest at a Colombian airport while traveling on phony passports. The Colombian military accused them of spending several weeks in territory controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

In recent months the rebels have intensified their bloody campaign to destabilize the South American nation, often utilizing the kind of powerful homemade weaponry pioneered by the IRA in Northern Ireland in the 1980s.

British anti-terrorist detectives have identified Monaghan, a former Sinn Fein party executive member, as an IRA veteran with convictions dating back to 1971 and a modern role as the IRA's "education officer." They have accused McCauley of expertise in designing truck-mounted mortars used to attack military barracks, although McCauley's only conviction is for possessing weapons after he was shot in a police ambush in 1982.

Connolly, an Irish aid worker living in Havana, Cuba, had not been on Britain's list of IRA suspects. Adams spent several weeks denying that Connolly had anything to do with Sinn Fein, either - until the Cuban government announced that they considered him to be
Sinn Fein's Latin American representative.

Adams last October admitted that Connolly was indeed the party's Latin American representative.

Adams reiterated previous assertions that the IRA had not sent the men to Colombia and that the group posed no threat to U.S. national security interests there.

He also said his commitment to the Northern Ireland peace process was a factor in his decision in light of a series of allegations about IRA activity in the province that have raised concerns about its commitment to peace.

Sinn Fein has accused elements within the British establishment of using "dirty tricks" to undermine the peace process, and to damage the party's credibility ahead of a general election in the Irish republic next month.

The party currently has one seat in the 166-member Irish parliament.