Storm Over Blair Handshake with Adams Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source:jdooling@worldnet.att.net 10/13/97 PA 10/13/97 06:58 Blair Defends Adams Handshake And `Risks For Peace' RT 10/13/97 06:44 Storm Over UK's Blair Talks With Sinn Fein Blair Defends Adams Handshake And `Risks For Peace' PA 10/13/97 06:58 Copyright 1997 PA News By Melissa Kite, PA News Prime Minister Tony Blair today said he was determined to take risks for peace in Northern Ireland and abandon the old ways of violence and despair. Speaking on a high profile visit to the Province, during which he will shake hands with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Mr Blair said: "In the end it always comes back to the choice people have. "You can always go back to the old ways of fighting, violence and despair and no future for the people of Northern Ireland or we can decide `Yes, we will take risks, but we will take risks fully consistent with the principle of consent, of non-violence and of democracy'." The Prime Minister defended his meeting with Mr Adams and said he would hold Sinn Fein to its commitment to non-violence. "That is what they accepted and that is what we will hold them to." He said he had met other politicians in relation to the talks process and he saw nothing strange about meeting Sinn Fein. "They are in the talks process and all those people who are in the talks process have signed up to the Mitchell Principles of non- violence and the democratic path is one that has to be chosen by the people in that process." Mr Blair said the talks would continue to be based on the Mitchell Principles of non-violence and of the principle of consent. "That is paramount," he said. Mr Blair was speaking after a visit to the Seagate computer technology plant in Londonderry where he was greeted by dozens of children from Protestant and Catholic schools in the area. After a 45-minute tour of the factory he shook hands with workers gathered outside who cheered enthusiastically. Mr Blair was heard sharing a joke with one of the children about which football team he supported. He said the factory, which recently announced the creation of 1,200 new jobs, represented the future for Northern Ireland. Earlier stayaway Unionists accused him of insulting the victims of IRA violence by meeting Mr Adams. MPs Ian Paisley and Robert McCartney claimed the Prime Minister was making a huge mistake he would bitterly regret once the Provisionals started shooting again. The UK Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionists have withdrawn from the peace talks because of Sinn Fein's admission and will not be at Stormont when Mr Blair meets leaders and representatives of the other eight parties involved in the process later today. The scheduled meeting with Mr Adams will be the first between Sinn Fein and a British Prime Minister since 1921, when Lloyd George and Michael Collins signed the Treaty which left Ireland divided. Their handshake will be private and behind closed doors. ****************************** FOCUS-Storm Over UK's Blair Talks With Sinn Fein RTw 10/13/97 06:44 Copyright 1997 Reuters Ltd By Martin Cowley BELFAST, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Tony Blair arrived in Northern Ireland on Monday for the first meeting between a British prime minister and an Irish republican leader for more than 70 years and immediately met a storm of criticism. Blair was due to come face to face with Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, as part of a series of brief meetings with the leaders of parties taking part in multi-party talks aimed at bringing peace to the troubled British province. British officials said they hoped the one-day visit would boost confidence in the peace process, which aims to heal decades of tension between majority Protestants and minority Catholics over the future of British rule. But Ken Maginnis, security spokesman for the Ulster Unionist Party, the main pro-British Protestant group, said it was "demeaning for the prime minister of the United Kingdom to be meeting unreconstructed terrorists like Gerry Adams..." Maginnis, whose party is at the table to strengthen British rule and head off the republicans' goal of reuniting Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic, said the meeting was "folly." David Lloyd George was the last British prime minister to shake hands with Irish republican leaders when he met Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins during negotiations with Sinn Fein in 1921 that led to the partition of Ireland. Blair will meet Adams behind closed doors at Stormont, the venue in east Belfast of the multi-party talks, as part of a brief exchange with the leaders of the eight parties taking part. Two other unionist parties are boycotting the talks. The expected handshake between Blair and Adams will not be filmed -- cameras are barred from all sessions of the talks, which began in earnest last Tuesday. Unionists, angry that Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrillas have not surrendered their weapons as part of the moves towards peace, are furious at what they see as a move bestowing respectability on Sinn Fein. "As far as the British prime minister is concerned, he will be able to meet Gerry Adams behind closed doors so that posterity will have no photographs to show the folly of what he has done if, as many of us expect, the IRA return to violence," Maginnis told BBC radio. Britain's main Conservative opposition party has also attacked the meeting as premature. But republicans said it was a symbolic occasion that recognised Sinn Fein's democratic credentials. Adams told the London Times newspaper on Monday that the meeting would be "a step towards bringing about a new relationship between the people of this island." Gerry O'Hara, Sinn Fein chairman in Northern Ireland, said the meeting was an acknowledgement of his party's electoral mandate. Sinn Fein won 17 percent of the vote at a British general election on May 1, winning seats in the London parliament for Adams and Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness. "We'll be saying that British government involvement in our affairs in this country has been the cause of the conflict for the last 75 years and that they should be encouraging unionists to engage seriously in these talks..." he told BBC radio. "It is a symbolic occasion and quite historic. We will be taking the opportunity to say directly... that it is time that the government withdrew from our country," O'Hara said. Blair was due to visit the nationalist city of Londonderry and carry out other engagements in Northern Ireland before meeting Adams and other political leaders on Monday afternoon. REUTERS Jay Dooling (jdooling@worldnet.att.net) Irish Aires - 90.1FM KPFT in Houston http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Irish_Aires/homepage.htm Dooling & Mabe, CPA http://www.doolingmabe-cpa.com/ ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-10.14.97-00:43:12-3963