30-year history of Basque-Irish links

(Irish News)

Links between Irish republicanism and Basque separatism are thought to stretch back more than 30 years, when Eta provided the IRA with handguns in the early 1970s.

Basque militants have also been named in the past as a link organisation which helped the IRA acquire semtex.

However, Sinn Féin has insisted that the link between Irish republicans and Basque nationalists has always been political.

Members of the Basque separatist party Herri Batasuna are regular delegates at Sinn Féin's Ard Fheis, while republican politicians have been regular visitors to the Basque country throughout the last 30 years.

In 1998 Gerry Adams travelled to the Basque country to meet with Herri Batasuna. In 2002 Sinn Féin's Alex Maskey also visited as an observer in failed peace negotiations.

However, there are also links between mainstream Irish nationalism and Basque nationalists opposed to violence.

Basque nationalism celebrates Aberri Eguna (The Day of Basque Fatherland) on Easter Sunday, inspired by the 1916 Easter Rising.

Clonard priest Fr Alec Reid was involved in attempts to broker peace between Basques and the Spanish government two years ago.

The mainstream Basque Nationalist Party (BNP) has held power in the region's government for 20 years, similar to the SDLP throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1998 the BNP established dialogue with Eta and Herri Batasuna, under the heading The Irish Forum. The talks discussed lessons that could be learned from the experience of Northern Ireland.

The outcome was an agreement to co-operate in a common political programme seeking a constitutional change for the region. Soon after Eta declared an unconditional ceasefire.

It would later be claimed that the talks process had been inspired by the dialogue in the early 1990s between John Hume and Gerry Adams.

Eta's ceasefire ended in December 1999 when the Spanish government refused to discuss the issue of Basque independence.

Eta not only blamed the Spanish and French governments but also the mainstream BNP, accusing it of failing to abide by agreements made during the Irish Forum.

In 1998 Gerry Adams called for Basque separatists to follow the example of Irish republicans by finding by a democratic solution to their armed conflict.

"Let's hope it will be possible (for Basques) to arrive at the same configuration of forces as we have built here during years of strife," he said.

March 13, 2004
http://www.nuzhound.com/articles/irish_news/arts2004/mar12_Basques_Irish_links.php

Belfast Telegraph
Stark reminder of horror of terrorism
MADRID BOMBS: An atrocity that underlines the need to reject violence
12 March 2004
What is the difference between what happened in Madrid yesterday and what happened on Bloody Friday in Belfast all those years ago?

What is the difference between yesterday's atrocity and the bombing of McGurk's Bar, Claudy, La Mon or Omagh? The only difference is the scale of the suffering and the horrendous death toll.

The images of bloodied faces and people with severed limbs are, regrettably, all too familiar to anyone who lived through the troubles in Northern Ireland. People in every village, town and city of the province can empathise today with the trauma that has engulfed Madrid.

Having endured 30 years of terrorism, we in Northern Ireland can identify with the grief now being visited on Spain. Tragically, this province has had more than its fair share of such barbarism.

And even today, although it does not make worldwide headlines, the terrorists remain active. Whether it is a parcel bomb in Plumbridge, a petrol bomb attack in Larne or a threat to members of the District Policing Partnership in Craigavon, the men of violence are still trying to flex their muscles.

Whether it is ETA, Al Qaida, the IRA or the loyalist paramilitaries, the message has to be that terrorism has nothing to offer but murder and mayhem. All the bombers know is how to kill people and to attempt to destroy society.

In Northern Ireland, we are on the brink of a potential watershed as this society decides whether to reject violence once and for all. The choice is either to secure a complete end of all paramilitary activities or to stumble forward into an increasingly uncertain future.

The forthright comments of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern suggest that this is make up your mind time for the republican movement. Parties that aspire to places in government cannot hope to maintain their links with active paramilitary groups.

Horror beyond horror as yesterday's attack in Madrid proved to be, surely it must strengthen the resolve of every one of us to reject violence completely. That is the message from Spain that should permeate every corner of the world, not least this island. It is time for democrats everywhere to assert themselves.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/story.jsp?story=500434

irish Independent
12th March
IRA and Eta learned long ago that causing civilian deaths was counter-productive

THE sheer scale of the killings caused many to question if it really was Eta. The Basque terrorist group like the IRA has waged bombing and shooting campaigns for decades, but never on this scale. But both organisations have long known that killing innocent civilians is highly counter-productive.

They both have a homeland for which they fought. Islamic fundamentalism, if indeed it is finally found to have been al-Qa'ida, is a movement but not a national movement, rather it is sees itself as waging a holy war where ever it can against the Western 'crusaders'.

Just two weeks ago Pernando Barrena, a regional Batasuna MP, attended Sinn Fein's ard fheis in Dublin to update republicans on political developments around the Basque issue. He is believed to have conveyed a sense that little was moving, with Basque elements and the Spanish government at loggerheads. His trip was routine in the sense that Basques and Sinn Fein have an affinity for each other, and regularly exchange visits. Eta republican source outlined advice given both to the Basques and, via diplomatic channels, to the Spanish government: "Our message has always been the same, that they need to build a peace process, and that you have to do that on the basis of equality.

"You can't draw a strict comparison between the two situations but you can't criminalise or exclude people. You can only build a peace process by dialogue." Republican hopes that the Spanish authorities and the Basques could have benefited from the lessons of the Irish peace process have so far come to nothing.

In terms of violence, the Madrid bombing fatalities surpass anything seen in Irish violence. 3,700 people died in the troubles, but the toll only ever once approached one hundred deaths in a single month. The IRA learned long ago that inflicting civilian casualties was highly counter-productive. This was most clearly acknowledged following the 1987 Poppy Day explosion which killed eleven people, when an IRA spokesman said: "Politically and internationally it is a major setback. Our support is in concentric rings. The centre is the republican movement, the next is the nationalist community, left groups and finally international sympathy.

"Our central base can take a hell of a lot of jolting and crises, with limited demoralisation. But the outer reaches are just totally devastated. The obloquy we've attracted cuts the ground from under us." These sentiments were echoed by Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, who said: "What is clear is that our efforts to broaden our base have most certainly been upset. Our plans for expansion will have been dealt a body blow."

The Irish experience is that attacks on the security forces are widely regarded as a legitimate form of warfare, but targeting civilians is beyond the pale. Loyalist paramilitary groups never learned this lesson, with civilians amounting to perhaps 90pc of those killed by them. The fact that they were oblivious to the distaste for civilian casualties may help explain why they have failed to develop strong political wings.

The taboo against causing civilian casualties is so strong that those involved in inflicting them often blame others and refuse to accept responsibility.

This was seen in the case of Michael McKevitt, believed to be head of the "Real IRA" when it killed 29 people - three of them Spanish school children - in the 1998 Omagh bombing. A witness at his trial testified McKevitt had been "horribly upset" about the Omagh bomb, but had explained that another republican group, Continuity IRA, was really 80pc to blame for what happened.

Although many observers believe the Omagh attack was not deliberately designed to inflict a large number of civilian casualties, the fact that the death toll may have been accidental does not lessen the flood of condemnation in such cases.
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=36&si=1144813&issue_id=10581

Sinn Fein platform for Eta angers Unionists

Trimble attacks invitation as 'crass insensitivity'

Rosie Cowan, Ireland correspondent
Wednesday September 26, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,558196,00.html

Unionists yesterday accused Sinn Fein of "crass insensitivity" over plans to allow political representatives of the Basque separatist group Eta to address its annual conference this weekend in the face of the global anti-terrorist backlash .

Party chairman Mitchel McLaughlin confirmed members of the Euskadi party would take the platform in front of 2,000 delegates in Dublin, but stressed they were politicians not paramilitaries.

"We will have political representatives of many struggles, and that has been a feature of our international perspective," he said. "We have not invited Eta."

But unionists are infuriated, particularly as security sources claim Eta contacts may have introduced the IRA to the Marxist rebel group, Farc, in Colombia.

The Colombian authorities arrested three IRA suspects last month for allegedly collaborating with Farc, which the Provisionals strenuously deny.

The Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, said the Colombian affair had done inestimable damage to Protestant confidence in republicans.

Yesterday, his spokesman said: "The arrogance of Sinn Fein knows no limits.

"They've brazenly defied public opinion throughout the British Isles with regard to decommissioning. And post-New York and Washington, they have not altered their policy in terms of other international terrorist groups one bit. It's obviously business as usual."

Security sources claimed the IRA was preparing to decommission two of its secret arms dumps in the next few months, but Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams warned that Mr Trimble's plans to collapse the power-sharing executive in an attempt to pressurise the Provisionals would make achieving disarmament much harder.

Meanwhile, there were growing fears over escalating sectarian violence in north Belfast, where unionist and republican politicians issued separate calls for the government to review the IRA and loyalist ceasefires.

A 2-year-old Protestant girl and her grandmother escaped injury, but were badly shocked, when 25 shots were fired at a house in Halliday's Road on Monday night.

Earlier, eight shots were fired from the nationalist side at RUC officers lured to the area to investigate a suspect bomb.

At least two blast bombs and a pipe bomb exploded at Catholic houses but no one was hurt.

Serious trouble has flared at flashpoints in the north of the city all summer, peaking in a massive riot on July 12 in Ardoyne, where 113 police officers were injured and which RUC chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan claimed was orchestrated, possibly by the IRA.

The ongoing loyalist protest at the Catholic Holy Cross primary school in Ardoyne is also fuelling tension.

Assistant chief constable, Alan McQuillan, said the street violence of the past few months was on a level of ferocity not seen in Northern Ireland since the 1981 hunger strikes.

He said some of the perpetrators clearly had access to paramilitary weapons, but he could not say definitively which groups were involved, or whether they were mainstream or dissident.

The North Belfast Democratic Unionist MP, Nigel Dodds, said that it was clear the IRA was behind the violence and called for the government to urgently reassess the Provisionals' ceasefire.

However, the Sinn Fein North Belfast assemblyman, Gerry Kelly, said that there had been more than 200 bomb and gun attacks on Catholics in recent months, and that it was the loyalist Ulster Defence Association which should be censured.

Sinn Fein's big blunder
http://www.observer.co.uk/nireland/story/0,11008,706640,00.html

When IRA bombmakers went to train Colombia's drug-running guerrillas, they earned millions of dollars - and the enmity of old friends in the US
Northern Ireland - Observer special

Sandra Jordan, Henry McDonald and Ed Vulliamy
Sunday April 28, 2002
The Observer

In the city of Villavicencio 12 teenagers lay dead in the street. They had been killed in a classic terrorist attack: the secondary device.

Terrorists from the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) had detonated a small bomb earlier this month hoping to draw troops into a deadly trap. When they arrived, a second, larger bomb exploded, killing the youths instead of the security forces.

That bomb and other similar ones in Colombian cities was to have reverberations not only in South America but also in Washington, Dublin, London and Belfast.

The secondary device was part of a pattern Farc has developed in urban areas over the past year. The organisation rooted in rural Colombia has brought the war into the cities in a reign of terror designed to destabilise and overthrow the American-backed government in Bogotá of Andres Pastrana.

For Farc, the past year has seen notable successes . It has killed 400 police and military officers and caused $500 million (£345m) in damage. But the terror group that taught the Marxist rebels how to stage attacks like that in Villavicencio has scored a major own goal.

Colombian and American officials are convinced that the Provisional IRA - whose political wing is welcome in the White House - trained the narco-terrorists of Farc in bomb-making technology.

The revelations about IRA involvement have placed the republican movement, especially its political wing Sinn Fein, in a precarious position with the Bush administration as well as undermining Unionist support for Northern Ireland's power-sharing coalition. It has shone a spotlight on the party's ambitions in the Republic of Ireland.

Unionists point to the presence of three IRA suspects awaiting trial in Bogotá over allegations that they trained Farc guerrillas. The trio includes James Monaghan, a convicted IRA man and weapons innovator. It was Monaghan back in 1973 who invented the IRA mortar.

Alongside Monaghan is Martin McCauley, a leading figure in the IRA's engineering department who has perfected home-made mortar-like missiles. The Colombian military says McCauley's imprint has been evident in recent Farc attacks.

Even before last week's hearings of the House International Affair's Committee on Capitol Hill, US intelligence had for months been working with their Colombian counterparts to map a web connecting Farc rebels to an international terror network that included the IRA.

Officials briefing The Observer said that while intelligence agencies had gathered 'no conclusive evidence of formal structural links' between Farc and the IRA, there was 'too much apparent traffic from Ireland to the Colombian guerrilla group to be a freelance coincidence'.

One source in the US Drug Enforcement Administration said that IRA links with Farc had been 'in our sights' for six months, while a State Department official added that 'ties had been made, and we expect to intensify them'.

The committee in Washington was hearing evidence after publication of a report saying the IRA had dispatched 15 men to Colombia between 1999 and last autumn, when Monaghan, McCauley and a third man, Sinn Fein's representative in Cuba, Niall Connolly, were arrested.

A fourth man now in the frame could lead the investigation closer to Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams (who refused to testify before the committee). This is allegedly Brian Keenan, who is believed to have come to Colombia a year ago under a false name. Keenan, a hardline Marxist, is a member of the IRA's ruling army council.

The allegations in Washington come, conveniently critics charge, as the White House presses for congressional support to change the 'Plan Colombia' package, allowing US military aid to be used to combat terrorism as well as counter-narcotics operations.

Bush wants to send an extra $98m to train the Colombian army to defend a controversial oil pipeline. Last Thursday, the Committee came under fire by its own members. Democratic Congressman William Delahunt claimed it was sitting 'not to determine facts, but to rubber stamp' conclusions already drawn.

Gerry Adams's allies, meanwhile, kept pressing those giving evidence, including the DEA's director Asa Hutchinson, to say if they were privy to intelligence that the IRA had sanctioned any involvement with Farc operations. 'I don't have any information on that,' Hutchinson replied.

Irish-American friends of Sinn Fein took heart from these remarks. Sinn Fein and the IRA, they believed, were off the hook. Back in Dublin Adams even claimed the Committee's chairman, Henry Hyde, had agreed with the Irish-American representatives that there was no evidence the IRA leadership had sent anyone to Colombia.

However, a Hyde aide told The Observer that the committee's staff had been aware of the testimony of Colombian General Fernando Tapías, who said the IRA had supplied expertise in bombing, mortars and missiles. 'We already knew that the IRA was involved,' Hyde's aide said.

According to intelligence officials, the introductions between Farc and the IRA were made via ETA, the Basque terror group. ETA had a cell in Cuba and has longstanding links with the IRA.

The implications of the Colombian connection are enormous. In Washington, Bush administration officials talk about 'exasperation' over the case. In Northern Ireland the looming trial of the trio held in Bogotá casts a shadow over the peace process.

Irish government figures, too, are exasperated and puzzled. The Clinton administration and the Bush White House have promoted Adams and his colleagues as statesmen who want to make peace. Moreover, up until the Colombian débcle Sinn Fein earned millions of dollars from corporate America.

Privately, Sinn Fein's political opponents are delighted the republican movement has been caught in a trap of its own making. With an Irish general election just weeks away, Sinn Fein's hopes of winning a handful of seats to make a breakthrough appear doomed. The Colombian debacle has added to the evidence that the party has failed to shake off its terrorist links.

The answer to the puzzle is simple: money. Farc is awash with cash thanks to its control of cocaine and heroin exports from Colombia into North America. Senior figures in the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Irish police believe Farc paid millions of dollars to the IRA for their expertise.

'There is no suggestion the Provos were in Colombia to rearm or prepare to go back to war themselves. This adventure was purely a financial transaction aimed at boosting their war chest,' one Irish police source said.

Nor was the money destined to buy new arms, the sources said. The vast sums of cash channelled by Farc to Ireland via front companies and secret bank accounts was to fund Sinn Fein.

The irony of a terrorist group made rich on the proceeds of cocaine and heroin sending money to the republican movement is not lost on Sinn Fein's opponents. Sinn Fein hopes to make gains in the Irish election, particularly in Dublin where it spearheads the anti-drugs movement.

Across the border, the Farc connection alongside revelations of IRA hit-lists on top Tories, allegations of IRA involvement in the Castlreagh police station break-in and claims that the Provos killed a man in Co. Tyrone last week simply for beating up a senior republican have pulverised unionist faith in Sinn Fein's claims to be a party of peace. The power-sharing coalition is under strain.

Back in Bogotá at rush hour, soldiers stand along main streets in a line that seems to stretch for miles. It is strangely reminiscent of Belfast in 1972 when life ground to a halt due to the bombing campaign of the organisation that has helped Farc besiege Colombia's capital - the IRA

Sunday Independent
Sinn Fein split on Basque ties as Irish tourists brave bombs

A DIVISION now exists in Sinn Fein as its senior members try to distance themselves from groups such as ETA and other active foreign terrorist groups, including Colombia's FARC.

Older, mainly Northern-based Sinn Fein figures who have been closely associated with the peace process for years are unhappy with the continuing relations between ETA-linked groups in Spain and some of the Party's younger figures who still enjoy flirting with foreign "revolutionary" groups who have close associations with terrorism.

It was not always like this. Sinn Fein and the IRA have had close relations with ETA and its political wing Batasuna for almost 30 years. Prominent Batasuna figures attend Sinn Fein Ard Feisanna to be greeted fraternally by Gerry Adams as "our friends from the Basque country". There is strong circumstantial evidence to suggest the IRA traded information and terrorist expertise with ETA, and subsequently with the FARC guerillas in Colombia. The relationship with ETA can be traced back to the early Seventies.

The relationship with FARC is more modern, and continued after the last IRA ceasefire was called in 1997.

The last major IRA bomb attack in Northern Ireland was in October 1996 when it detonated two car bombs inside the British Army headquarters at Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn, Co Antrim. The first bomb was designed to cause minor level injuries and draw in more soldiers who were then caught in the second blast. One soldier was killed and 30 injured.

A virtually identical operation was mounted by ETA against the main army base at Vitoria in the Basque region a month after the IRA attack in Lisburn.

ETA has also been found to have mortar equipment virtually identical to that designed and manufactured by the IRA. It used a Mark 15 mortar to attack the Guardia Civil headquarters in San Sebastian in March 2000. The Spanish police said the equipment was identical to the IRA's. Booby-trap under-car bombs clearly based on IRA devices have also been used in many murders by ETA.

And the IRA's Mark 15 mortar has been replicated in Colombia by FARC with design and firing guidance provided by the IRA in return for substantial sums of money, which FARC raises through the sale of cocaine. The Mark 15 was used in an attack which killed 113 civilians in Colombia last year and during an attack on President Uribe's inauguration ceremony, killing 19 people. No IRA figure has, however, ever been captured in Spain training or working with ETA and no ETA figure has been caught here involved in acts of terrorism.

However, the relationship has changed since the days when the IRA helped train ETA in explosives and mortars in return for assistance in arms smuggling.

Nowadays republican leaders are nervous about views of the relationship with ETA among their friends in the post-September 11 United States. The Sinn Fein MLA and former Lord Mayor of Belfast, Alex Maskey has visited the Basque region on several occasions over the past decade and publicly encouraged Batasuna and ETA to adopt a ceasefire and politics path like that chosen by Sinn Fein and the IRA. The Sinn Fein leadership's public stance is that it supports autonomy for the Basque region, but wishes this to come about through peaceful means.

ETA has killed around 800 people in its 35-year-long campaign including politicians, journalists and others it regards as opposed to its campaign for Basque sovereignty. ETA's political wing - now outlawed - commands around 10 per cent of the vote in the Basque region with the rest of the political groups there opposed to its terrorism. Its latest attacks are again aimed at disrupting Spain's vital tourist economy.

On Monday it detonated two bombs in hotels in Benidorm and Alicante - centres of tourism on the Costa Blanca which attract thousands of Irish holidaymakers each year. Irish Travel Agents' Association figures show that about a quarter of a million Irish tourists visited Spain last year, with another 191,000 visiting the Balearic Islands of Majorca and Minorca, and a further 240,000 visiting the Canary Islands. This means that this year, up to 700,000 Irish tourists are visiting areas that are on ETA's target list. The risk to Irish visitors - Belfast's SDLP Lord Mayor, Martin Morgan was in a chemist's shop next to one of the hotels when it was bombed - has not, however, prompted criticism of ETA or its political wing from Sinn Fein.

Some figures inside Sinn Fein, particularly in the Republic, have shown themselves to be closely supportive of ETA. There are understood to be particularly close links between members of the youth movements of both Batasuna and Sinn Fein. There are regular 'solidarity' visits with groups of between 30 and 40 Basque youths at a time visiting Ireland each summer.

The links between young members of Sinn Fein and the ETA youth movement Haika, also known as Jarrai, are regarded with particular suspicion by the Spanish authorities. Haika is regarded as a recruiting agency for ETA and the Spanish Embassy in London let it be known last year that 23 members who had visited Northern Ireland in recent years have since been arrested on suspicion of ETA-related activity.

Jim Cusack

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=36&si=1019188&issue_id=9568

Belfast Telegraph
Steven King: Basqueing in the glory of terror

By Steven King
featureseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

27 August 2003
EOIN O Broin is an up-and-coming Sinn Fein figure. This North Belfast councillor comes across as young, bright - even affable.

He is author of a new book on Basque nationalism and radical Basque youth movements. Apart from revealing republicans' continued international dalliance with terrorism, it demonstrates how tactical the republican embrace of democratic structures appears to be.

The book's title is Matxinada which apparently is Basque for "revolution" or "revolt". Although Eoin apparently does not speak either Basque or Spanish, he does not hesitate to correct the Basque dictionary whose English translation he claims does not adequately cover the full meaning of the word. This he tells us was that it best expressed the Basques' hundreds of years fighting for independence from the Spanish and French states "irrespective of the cost or consequences".

In fact, it is just because of the cost and consequences of the activities of violent Basque nationalists that the majority of Basques are opposed to the terrorist organisation ETA and its various political, trade union and youth front organisations.

Eoin's Basque comrades claim a "homeland" which includes the three Spanish provinces which elect an autonomous Basque parliament, another province - Navarre - plus two regions in the south of France.

Of these six areas, nationalists are in a majority. In the Basque parliament elections in 2001, Herri Batasuna, ETA's political wing, got only 10% of the vote.

Eoin also displays that contempt for basic democratic rights and values that was used to legitimise 30 years of "armed struggle" in Northern Ireland.

He dismisses any reference to the more than 800 people killed by ETA since 1968 as a "mantra". In 1997 ETA kidnapped and murdered Miguel Angel Blanco a local councillor for the ruling Popular Party. Millions of people took to the streets of Spain's main cities, including those in the Basque country, to protest at his murder.

Eoin cannot ignore this massive manifestation of opposition to ETA and its political apologists but finds it startling and "ugly" that nobody turned out to protest when in the same year the body of a young ETA member on-the-run was found.

Part of the reason might be that most people accepted that the death was suicide- something Eoin predictably dismisses as a lie peddled by Spanish "securocrats". It might also have something to do with the atrocities committed by ETA. These are airbrushed out of Eoin's history.

He does mention an attack on a Civil Guard barracks in Zaragoza in 1987 which he writes "caused concern in Madrid". Eleven died, six of them children.

He ignores ETA's own "Enniskillen" in the same year when it placed a car bomb in the underground car park of the Hipercor supermarket in Barcelona, murdering nineteen. At least the families of the victims of this atrocity have been able to see its perpetrators sent to prison for long terms, unlike the Enniskillen families.

The book's real heroes are the members of the radical Basque youth movement, members of which are frequent visitors to republican events here.

These youth movements' most important manifestation is Kale Borroka: street violence. Although Eoin depicts this as a spontaneous expression of youthful rage at the "repressive" Spanish state, the Irish journalist Paddy Woodworth, someone with a profound knowledge of the Basque country, correctly depicts Kale Borroka as part of an ETA strategy.

Apart from terrorising the streets with attacks by dozens of masked youths on banks, shops, and police-stations there is an even more sinister strategy of intimidating ETA's political opponents and critics. Ironically for a supposedly "radical" movement, many of its victims have been members of the Spanish Socialist Party and their families.

Party premises have been attacked, left-wing bookshops burnt down and the homes of socialists daubed with threatening slogans and some have been petrol-bombed. Journalists, intellectuals, trade unionists and lecturers have all been attacked as part of Kale Borroka, which one Spanish academic has termed "ethnic cleansing".

For those who refuse to be intimidated the price can be fatal. In May 2000, a former communist activist jailed under Franco, Jose Luiz Lopez de la Calle, was shot dead by ETA gunmen. Eoin mentions the death and "explains" it by referring to the victim's column for 'the right wing Spanish paper El Mundo' and quoting from his murderers' justification that he "manipulated the truth".

In that one paragraph, there was a chilling echo of Provoism at its fascist worst that also had no scruples about killing socialists.

Eoin's comrades in the republican movement may have begun the process of replacing armed struggle with populist electioneering.

If this book is symptomatic of their underlying values they still have a long way to go in breaking with the mindset that made terrorism acceptable.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/story.jsp?story=437610

ETA: Feared separatist group

By Paul Sussman, CNN.com Europe writer
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/basque/stories/background.html

ETA members in a 1996 ETA amateur video

LONDON, England (CNN) -- For 32 years the Basque separatist group ETA has been fighting for an independent Basque state in northern Spain.

During that period, ETA has been blamed for killing more than 800 people, kidnapping 70 others and wounding thousands, making it one of the most feared organisations of its kind in Europe.

ETA, founded in 1959, stands for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, Basque for "Basque Homeland and Freedom." It killed what some say was its first victim in 1968.

Since then it has waged a relentless campaign of violence against the Spanish state, targeting politicians, policemen, judges and soldiers. ETA's deadliest weapons are car bombs, which have caused numerous civilian casualties. In 1980 alone ETA was blamed for 118 deaths, and in 1995 it nearly succeeded in assassinating Jose Maria Aznar, then leader of the opposition, now Spain's prime minister.

On September 16, 1998, the organisation declared a "unilateral and indefinite" cease-fire, raising hopes that its campaign was at an end. ETA called off the cease-fire in November 1999, however, and 2000 saw a sharp escalation in violence.

Fiercely independent

The Basque country, or Euskal Herria as it is known in Basque, straddles the western end of the Pyrenees, covering 20,664 square kilometres in northern Spain and southern France. Spain officially recognizes three Basque provinces, Alava, Guipuzcoa and Vizcaya. A fourth neighboring province, Navarra, is of Basque heritage. Separatists consider these four provinces plus three in France -- Basse Navarre, Labourd and Soule -- as the Basque country, with a population approaching 3 million.

The area has always possessed a fiercely independent instinct. The Basque people are the oldest indigenous ethnic group in Europe and have lived uninterrupted in the same region since the beginning of recorded history.

Their language, Euskera, which is spoken regularly by about 40 percent of Basque inhabitants, bears no relation to any other Indo-European tongue and dates back to before the Romans arrived in Spain.

For many centuries the Basques of Spain enjoyed a strong degree of autonomy. In the Spanish Civil War, two Basque provinces -- Guipuzcoa and Viscaya -- fought against Gen. Francisco Franco, while the provinces of Alava and Navarra fought for Franco. Under Franco's dictatorship (1939-75), most of the Basque region had its remaining autonomy recinded. Its culture, people and language were suppressed.

ETA and its depands for an independent Basque state arose in 1959 in the midst of this suppression.

ETA today

ETA has focused its activities on the Spanish side of the border. For many years France provided a safe haven for ETA members, a situation that began to change in the mid-1980s.

The Basque region's hilly landscape helped keep its people isolated from outside influences

The organisation finances its campaign through kidnapping, bank robbery and a so-called "revolutionary tax" on Basque businesses -- a payment that is widely regarded as plain extortion. No one knows how many businesses make these payments.

According to the counter-terrorism office of the U.S. State Department, ETA members have received training in Libya, Lebanon and Nicaragua, while the group also enjoys close links with the Irish Republican Army (the Good Friday peace accord influenced ETA to call its cease-fire in 1998).

Active support for ETA is limited, and although no accurate figures are available, its membership is not thought to number more than a few hundred. It is believed to operate in small commando cells of about five people each. The party that many believe to be its political wing, Herri Batasuna (founded in 1978), rarely scores higher than 20 percent in local elections, considerably less than the more moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).

While many Basques support independence -- up to 40 percent, according to PNV leader Xabier Arzalluz -- the vast majority of Basques oppose the use of violence.

The response of the Spanish government to ETA's activities has been two-pronged.

On one hand Spain has sought to accommodate the region's strong sense of local identity. Since the early 1980s, the Basque provinces of Alava, Guipuzcoa and Vizcaya have been recognised as an autonomous region known as Pais Vasco, with its own parliament and police force, and with Euskera as the official language.

At the same time Madrid has cracked down hard on anyone suspected of being an ETA member.

From 1983-87, a shadowy organization called the Anti-Terrorist Liberation Group (or GAL, from its Spanish name), was blamed for killing 27 suspected ETA members. This later proved to be a major scandal for Socialist Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, who was in power from 1982-96. One of his interior ministers served time in jail for his role in a kidnapping carried out by GAL.

In 1997, 23 leaders of Herri Batasuna were arrested and jailed for collaborating with ETA.

Despite the crackdowns and widespread public condemnation of its activities, ETA has continued its campaign of violence. Inaki Azcuna, the mayor of Bilbao, said: "We have too many attacks and not enough dialogue."

It is a situation which, at present, shows no sign of changing.

From The BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/176082.stm

Adams urges ETA towards peace

Sinn Fein want ETA to pursue a democratic path

Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, has called on Basque separatists to follow the example of Republicans in Northern Ireland and find a democratic solution to their armed conflict.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Mr Adams said he welcomed the announcement of an indefinite ceasefire called by the Basque separatist movement, ETA, on Wednesday.

"Let's hope it will be possible (for Basques) to arrive at the same configuration of forces as what we have built here during years of strife, and that it will also allow for a democratic solution," Mr Adams said.

Recent talks

Mr Adams said Sinn Fein held talks recently with the political wing of ETA, Herri Batasuna.

Many ETA activists are in prisons

He said his party, kept out of mainstream UK and Irish politics for years, believed conflicts must be resolved by dialogue, but added governments had a responsibility to show leadership.

The Spanish Prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, is to meet senior officials on Monday to discuss his government's response to the ETA ceasefire.

The links between the IRA and ETA are thought to go back to the early 1970s when ETA provided the IRA with handguns.

ETA has also been named in the past as the link organisation which helped the IRA acquire the devastating plastic explosive semtex.

But Sinn Fein says the focus recently has been on political contacts between Sinn Fein and Herri Batasuna.

ETA's truce comes after 30-years of violence in the fight for an independent Basque region, costing the lives of 800.

ETA: Key events
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/172539.stm

Estimated six million took to the streets after ETA killed Miguel Angel Blanco in 1997

More than 800 lives have been lost during ETA's 30-year campaign for a sovereign Basque state.

Franco years

* 1937: General Franco occupies Basque country. The Basques had enjoyed a degree of autonomy which they now were denied. Franco regime ruthlessly repressed their aspirations for independence

* 1959: ETA is founded with the aim of creating an independent homeland in Spain's Basque region. The full name of the organisation - Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna - means Basque fatherland and freedom.

* 1961: ETA's violent campaign begins with an attempt to derail train transporting politicians.

* 1968: ETA kills its first victim, Meliton Manzanas, a secret police chief in San Sebastian.

Violence continues

* 1978: ETA's political wing Herri Batasuna is founded.

* 1980: 118 people are killed in ETA's bloodiest year so far.

* 1995:Attempt to assassinate the leader of the opposition Popular Party (now Prime Minister), Jose Maria Aznar, with a car bomb.

New government

* March 1996: Right-wing Popular Party wins general election. There was speculation that the change of government would lead to a crackdown against ETA, which later proved wrong. But ETA apparently views the Popular Party as heir to General Franco's dictatorship.

* 1997: Start of ETA's campaign against local Popular Party politicians.

* July 1997: ETA kidnaps and kills Basque councillor Miguel Angel Blanco, sparking national outrage and bringing an estimated 6 million Spaniards on the streets.

Leaders jailed

* December 1997: 23 leaders of Herri Batasuna jailed for 7 years for collaborating with ETA. The case centred on an video featuring armed and masked ETA guerrillas, which the party tried to show during general election campaign. This was the first time any members of the party have been jailed for co-operating with ETA.

* February 1998: Herri Batasuna elects new provisional leadership.

Cross-party talks

* March 1998: Spain's main political parties engage in talks to end violence in the Basque region. The government is not involved.

* April 1998: Northern Ireland peace agreement signed. ETA is understood to have been heavily influenced by the Northern Ireland peace process. ETA has traditionally had relations with the Irish republicans and the political wing Herri Batasuna has been schooled by Sinn Fein on strategy for negotiation.

* June 1998: The latest ETA death takes place, as car bomb kills Popular Party councillor Manuel Zamarreno.

* September 1998: ETA announces its first indefinite cease-fire since its 30-year campaign of violence began, effective from 18 September.

1999

In June Madrid says it held its first direct talks with ETA since 1989, but in August discussions are suspended. In November, ETA announces its cease-fire will end on December 3 because it is dissatisfied with the political process it has spawned.

2000

Twenty-three deaths are linked to ETA. Much of the violence takes place in the Basque area but there are explosions in Madrid and a shooting in Malaga.

Targets include two Spanish civil guards, a businessman, two army officers, four politicians, three town councillors, two bodyguards, a policeman, an ex-health minister and a newspaper columnist.

In January, more than 1 million protesters marched through central Madrid to express outrage at the return to violence. In August, in what was apparently an accident, four suspected members of ETA are killed in a blast. It is believed that Patxi Rementeria, suspected chief of the Commando Vizcaya, one of ETA's bloodiest units, is among the dead.

2001

Violence continues in early 2001 with ETA claiming responsibility in late March for the deaths of six people: a politician, two policemen, two commuters and a navy cook. Police arrest more than a dozen suspected ETA members, including the man believed to be head of ETA's military operations. Several months later, ETA claims responsibility for 15 more attacks, including five deaths, from March until mid-July.

The second half of the year sees several shootings and more than a dozen bombings or attempted bombings that leave at least seven people dead. In July alone, two car bombs kill a police officer and a town councillor; another police officer is shot dead; a woman suspected of belonging to ETA is killed while handling a bomb; and a Spanish general died from wounds suffered in a June bomb blast.

2002

Car bombings across Spain leave dozens of people injured in the first half of 2002, including attacks coinciding with a European Champions Cup football semi-final and a European Union summit in Seville.

Two blasts in or near Bilbao injure four people in the first two months of the year. In early May, soccer fans in Madrid defy bombers, cheering on Real Madrid hours after two car bombs explode near the stadium, injuring 17. And in late June, five car bombs explode across the country, wounding nine, as European leaders close out Spain's six-month EU presidency.

Similar conflicts, different paths

By CNN Producer Alison Daniels
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/basque/stories/eta.ira.html

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams went to the Basque region in 1998 to push peace talks

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The conflict in the Basque region bears some resemblance to that in Northern Ireland. In both, divisions are deeply entrenched.

But unlike the situation in Spain, major strides have been made in Northern Ireland towards a peaceful solution.

The Basque separatist group ETA watched closely as the Irish Republican Army declared a cease-fire in 1994 after 25 years of violence, and all sides in the Northern Ireland conflict began peace talks in earnest.

In 1998, ETA declared its own cease-fire. One of the leading figures in the Irish peace process, the republican Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams, visited the Basque town of Bilbao in September 1998 advocating peace talks.

"There is bound to be distrust here. People have been hurt, people have been killed. There is bound to be suspicion. There is bound to be hatred. There is bound to be fear," Adams said. "And the way to resolve that is to seize that opportunity and build on that opportunity and widen the space which has been created."

But 14 months after it began, the Basque cease-fire was over.

Gurruchaga: "Political divisions in the Basque (region) remain stable"

"When ETA announced the truce in September 1998, it was a response to something called the Irish Forum -- meetings of Basque political parties to come to common conclusions about what was happening in Northern Ireland," said Inigo Gurruchaga, London correspondent for the Spanish daily newspaper El Correo.

"The influence was massive, but with the passing of time it has decreased. ... During the truce the Spanish government behaved without any political convergence," Gurruchaga said.

"And while they maintained clandestine direct dialogue with ETA, they always refused to maintain any type of political dialogue with their political representatives."

However, Spanish historian Anthony Gooch of the London School of Economics says the Basque nationalist party Herri Batasuna, despite its closeness to Sinn Fein, was also reluctant to be influenced by the Northern Ireland peace process.

Gooch: "ETA ... can't possibly get what it wants"

"The Basques take what they like of the Irish experience ... and they leave what don't like, so they're very selective," Gooch said. "So you can't say Basques have followed the Sinn Fein model or ETA has followed the IRA model."

Dialogue and demographics

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made it clear that dialogue is the only option in Northern Ireland.

"There is every reason to proceed with it and push it forward, and ... I've satisfied myself clearly that the political will exists to do that," Blair said in January 2001. "We've just got to find a way of getting over these remaining problems."

Blair's counterpart in Spain, Jose Maria Aznar, holds a very different view.

"The only possible position on terrorism is to wipe it out. We will stamp it out wherever we find it," said the Spanish prime minister.

For UK leader Tony Blair, dialogue over Northern Ireland is the way forward

For some, Aznar's stance -- and the equally hard-line position of ETA -- offers little opportunity for Northern Ireland-style negotiations.

"One has the impression that the IRA is more or less getting what it wants along the lines that are being followed, whereas ETA is not getting what it wants and it can't possibly get what it wants," Gooch said.

Another difference between the two situations is that shifting demographics are shaping events in Northern Ireland.

"The inevitability of a future Northern Ireland integrated into the Republic of Ireland is due to demographics, to the growing number of Catholic families," Gurruchaga said.

Spanish leader Jose Maria Aznar is holding a firm line against ETA

"This is not happening in the Basque country. ... The political divisions in the Basque remain stable."

It was almost 10 years ago that No. 10 Downing Street, the home of Britain's prime minister, was the target of an IRA mortar attack. But by the end of the decade, after years of exhaustive diplomacy that included visits to Downing Street by Adams, the political landscape was unrecognisable.

It was inevitable that comparisons with Northern Ireland would be made when ETA declared its cease-fire in 1998.

But with the resumption of violence in Spain, it has become clear that the path taken in London and Belfast is a route many in Madrid and San Sebastian do not seem inclined to follow

CNN International anchor Jonathan Mann interviewed Xavier Mas De Xaxas, U.S. correspondent for the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, during a special edition of Insight in January 2001 on the Basque conflict in Spain.

Jonathan Mann: Thank you so much for being with us. So many people obviously abhor the violence, how many people support it? How many Basques actually support ETA?

Xavier Mas De Xaxas: Well, you couldn't really tell. But if you (look at) the result in the last elections, HB and the radical nationalist movement, the one who is supporting violence in order to gain independence, got around 200,000 votes.

Mann: Which would mean what, what percentage roughly, do you think?
IN-DEPTH
Basque conflict: Violence in Spain

Mas De Xaxas: There are 3 million Basques, around 2 million voting. So you do the math.

Mann: So the violent campaign for independence doesn't have much support. What about independence peacefully? If there were a simple referendum or a vote held tomorrow on … the Basque region, even as ETA imagines it, as big as that, would the region vote for its own independence, do you think?

Mas De Xaxas: I don't know. It's very close. I mean, the Spanish parties, the Popular Party and the Socialist Party, they have like around 50 percent of the votes. The other parties have 50 percent of the votes, too.

But the separatist movement is also very split. You have the ones who support violence and the ones who don't. The ones who don't, they're running the government. They have been running the government for the last 20 years, and now they are also divided.

Mann: And what does the Spanish government want? What has it been doing?

Mas De Xaxas: The Spanish government, after the truce was over, has been fighting very hard in order to stop the violence. I mean, they have to win the war against ETA through the police. There is a fear in the Basque country … many people have left their homes and their towns. They are living abroad.

Most of them are living in the United States.

So there is a social pressure for the government to end the violence and impose a peace. At the same time, the government … needs to find a way to open … dialogue with the nationalist movement. How to do that, I guess that after the elections -- there are going to be elections later this year -- they will need to find a way to make a coalition government. I mean, a government with all the democratic parties, in order to corner ETA.

Mann: Now, you passed over something very quickly, which is all of this has happened since the cease-fire ended. The cease-fire seemed like an enormous opportunity to do the kinds of things you're describing. Why was that opportunity lost?

Mas De Xaxas: There was a lack of confidence in both sides. ETA thought the government wasn't playing fairly. The government thought ETA wasn't playing fairly also. … So I think under those circumstances and with, as I said before, the political nationalist movement also divided, it was impossible to get the atmosphere in order to proceed with the negotiations.

Mann: In the decades that ETA has been fighting, the Spanish government has changed enormously, of course, from a fascist state to a democracy. In that time, has ETA changed much?

Mas De Xaxas: It has. I think that ETA is pretty much more radical right now. Why? Because they are targeting anybody. I mean, we're finding ETA right now … is very similar to the one in '86 or '82 -- people who are willing to kill anybody in order to gain their aims.

ETA is supported mainly now by very young people. People who have been raised in democracy, people who have lived all their lives in a country who is a member of the European Union, who enjoys almost any advantages you can find in any industrial country. So why are they finding the way to separate?

Why? Because I think they are angry. They are angry (at) Spain and they are angry because they can't find a way in order to live their nationalism without confrontation, constant confrontation toward Spain.

Mann: How do they keep a war like this going for 40 years? Are they getting help from outside the country or from inside? Where do they get the manpower? Where do they get the money?

Mas De Xaxas: Well, they get the money from the revolutionary tax, this extortion. … For many years, they had the support, the tacit support of the French government, and they've been able to develop bases in the south of France.

Now that's over. France is cooperating very much with the Spanish government in order to crack ETA. But also in the north of Africa, they have been training and at the same time, I guess, in Latin America.

Mann: So they still can attract the people they need, they still have the material they need to fight for another 40 years, do you think?

Mas De Xaxas: They have the money, and they have the people. I mean, the Spanish government has not found a way in order to stop the young generations … from joining ETA. I don't know how they're going to do it without cooperating with the Basque government.

Mann: People who travel in the Basque region or people who live there, do they feel like they're in an oppressed society, in a place where people are not free, where the culture is being weakened, where there is a problem?

Mas De Xaxas: Yes. I mean, you cannot talk freely in the Basque country. There was a poll a couple of days ago in the Basque newspaper saying that 80 percent of the population believes that it's impossible to speak freely about politics there. So there is fear, much fear.

Mann: Are they afraid of the government, or are they afraid of ETA?

Mas De Xaxas: They are afraid of ETA. I mean, I think that if you speak freely against ETA in the Basque country, you are going to be targeted, and you're under a death sentence. I mean, you can be killed, really.

Mann: So, does this go on because the conditions that created this conflict continue, because there is some kind of cultural or political repression? Or is this now a war that just has a logic and a momentum of its own that really doesn't have its roots in any political problem, but just has its roots in the war itself?

Mas De Xaxas: I think so. I mean, in fact, there's a cultural war going on. I mean, the young Basque street agitators, that's the main point from wherever it starts, you know? They are against Spain because they've been taught that everything coming from Spain is bad, (that) Spain is an oppressive force and (that) it's occupying this land without any legitimacy

Sunday Independent
Real IRA passed on information about Madrid-type bombs

JIM CUSACK

THE Real IRA - the group responsible for the Omagh atrocity - is believed to have passed on information about mobile phone-controlled bombs identical to those that exploded in Madrid's train system on Thursday.

The dissident republicans are also blamed for passing the technology on to Middle Eastern groups who have been using the same devices to attack American soldiers and police in Iraq.

The PSNI believes the Real IRA passed the technology on in return for promises of supplies of weapons and explosives, and for money.

Two Real IRA figures were tracked to Florence in Italy in December at the same time that international left-wing groups were holding a conference called the International Symposium on Isolation.

The conference itself was attended by non-terrorist figures including representatives of 32-County Sovereignty Committee and by the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

However, on the fringes of the conference it is understood that two members of the Real IRA met figures on the extreme fringe of ETA - the group that the Spanish government insists was responsible for Thursday's bombings.

There is still confusion over whether ETA or Al-Qaeda carried out the attacks.

But what is known is that the same type of mobile-phone bombs that were perfected by the Real IRA three years ago were used in

Madrid. The phone bombs have never been used by ETA before.

If Spanish terrorists are responsible, police in the North believe they might have been supplied with the technology by the Real IRA.

The Real IRA perfected the mobile-phone bomb, which it tested in south Armagh in late 2000. A highly-sophisticated bomb using two mobile phones linked to each other - to avoid electronic jamming by security forces - was discovered in Derry in February 2001. The mobile-phone bomb in a parked car was to have been detonated as a police patrol passed by.

The man suspected of perfecting the mobile-phone bombs lives in Dundalk. He was formerly the IRA's top electronic expert.

Israeli security services last year learned that a Real IRA suspect was involved in instructing members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in building and using the mobile-phone bombs. Bombs very similar to the Real IRA devices were found in Israel and have since been used in several attacks in Iraq.

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=1145344&issue_id=10585

Attack unnerves IRA hand
McGuinness voices hope ETA isn't tied to bombs in Spain
By Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff, 3/14/2004
from the Boston Globe

Martin McGuinness says he was standing in Shannon Airport on Thursday, waiting to board a flight to Boston, when he looked up at a television and saw the devastation in Madrid, trains torn open like tin cans, black body bags lined up in a row.

"This could be Al Qaeda," McGuinness said, turning to an aide, Aidan McAteer. Spain says the bombs that killed 200 may have been the work of ETA, the Basque group that has ties with the Irish Republican Army, which McGuinness once led. Yesterday, authorities arrested three Moroccans and two Indians in connection with the attack, the strongest indication yet of a possible radical Islamic link to the bombings.

Whoever was responsible, the timing couldn't have been worse for McGuinness, feted by admirers as the former revolutionary who led the IRA to compromise, and derided by adversaries as a former terrorist who wears two irreconcilable hats as a mainstream politician and a member of the IRA's ruling Army Council. McGuinness, chief negotiator for Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, and education minister in Northern Ireland's suspended local government, will be in Washington this week to take part in the St. Patrick's Day White House celebration. But, as in past years, it is a working holiday, and McGuinness and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams will be looking to garner congressional and White House support for their version of what's ailing the process in Northern Ireland.

As McGuinness put it in an interview, and in a speech Friday at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, he says the British government must convince Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland that there can be no renegotiation of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which created a power-sharing government to steer the Irish and the British out of three decades of bloodshed.

The assembly in Northern Ireland has been suspended since October 2002, when Britain pulled the plug rather than see unionists walk out because they say the IRA has not done enough to prove it is committed to democratic politics in pursuit of a united Ireland.

McGuinness said that it was unfair to blame just the IRA; that all parties bear responsibility for the breakdown and for restarting the process. He said the British government has not done enough to convince unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, that they must share power with Irish nationalists. And he said British loyalist paramilitary groups are responsible for far more violence than Irish republicans.

"It's easy to blame the IRA for everything," McGuinness said. "All the governments have to keep faith with the Good Friday Agreement. It's the only way forward."

McGuinness acknowledged that the attacks in Madrid will overshadow talks about the peace process in Washington. "How could it not overshadow everything else?" he asked.

As for who was responsible, McGuinness said: "The jury is still out." But he would be surprised if it was ETA. He said ETA has never carried out an attack of such scale, and with so little regard for civilian casualties. He said a senior member of Batasuna, ETA's political wing, attended Sinn Fein's annual conference last week and gave no hint that the Basque separatists were going to drastically change tactics. "I hope and pray it wasn't ETA," McGuinness said.

He said his party has urged Madrid to "engage the Basques the same way the British government engaged Irish republicans." He said the Northern Ireland peace process, for all its faults, shows that conflicts thought to be intractable can be resolved.

McGuinness lauded Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, even as he accused the British government of being too soft on unionists. And he acknowledged that Britain's role as the leading US ally in the war on terrorism and in Iraq presents Sinn Fein with challenges in balancing criticism of Blair with appreciation for his willingness to treat Northern Ireland as a political problem, rather than a security matter.

"Tony Blair has been the most imaginative, the most courageous, of prime ministers in facing up to Britain's responsibility in Ireland," he said. "I still think that Tony Blair and the US administration know how important the changes in Ireland have been, and want to stay with the process. Our main complaint is the failure of the British government and the unionist parties to deliver unionism. The inclination is to just blame republicans for the lack of progress."

More recently, the most vehement anti-Sinn Fein rhetoric has come not from the Rev. Ian Paisley, the fundamentalist Protestant minister whose Democratic Unionists last year became the leading party in Northern Ireland, but from the Irish government. Last week, Ireland's justice minister, Michael McDowell, compared Sinn Fein to Nazis, and accused the IRA of being involved in criminal activity in the Irish Republic. McDowell accused McGuinness and other leading Sinn Fein figures of being on the IRA's seven-member Army Council.

McGuinness denied those accusations, and said they reflect a fear in Ireland's traditional parties about Sinn Fein's success. He said he expects the attacks to increase in the run-up to local and European elections in June.

"It's the election, stupid," McGuinness said of the southern establishment's heated rhetoric. "We're the fastest-growing party in Ireland, and that's threatening to the established parties. . . . But, you know, the peace process is far more important than any election."

McGuinness's Boston itinerary reflected both Sinn Fein's appeal to blue-collar Irish-Americans and its move into the well-heeled mainstream. He had a posh fund-raiser Thursday night at the Parker House, where more than 100 people shelled out $125 a head, then he met more than 200 mostly working-class supporters at Florian Hall in Dorchester, where the donation was $25 per person. He met with a group of local union leaders. After speaking at Harvard, he attended the Boston Public Library "time" for former Senate and UMass president William M. Bulger of South Boston.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Harvard forum: McGuinness bumped into John F. Kerry at the Borders bookstore at Downtown Crossing. They chatted amiably.

McGuinness told Kerry he was "on a roll," but said he appreciated President Bush's continued interest in Northern Ireland. McGuinness knows better than to take sides in the US campaign.

Such circumspection suggests that McGuinness has made the transformation from revolutionary to statesman. Asked whether Sinn Fein had a position on gay marriage, he replied, smiling, "Yes. Steer clear."

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.