McGuinness may admit role in IRA

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, APRIL 30.The comparative lull in Northern Ireland's sectarian polemic was broken today following reports that the province's Education Minister and senior Sinn Fein leader, Mr. Martin McGuinness, planned to acknowledge his leading role in IRA, the banned paramilitary wing of the Sinn Fein.

Mr. McGuinness would appear before a tribunal investigating the infamous Bloody Sunday killings in 1972 when the British paratroopers shot dead 14 unarmed Catholics during a rights march in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

Reports, confirmed by the Sinn Fein, said he would disclose for the first time that he was IRA's second-in command in Derry that day and was present throughout the march, but he would deny any role in violence and dismiss as ``rubbish and a lie'' suggestions that he fired the first shot which led to

the police firing.

In a statement which he was reported to be preparing for the tribunal, he would claim that the IRA was under instructions to ensure that the march passed off peacefully. ``On the eve of the march, McGuinness, who supported plans for a peaceful demonstration, was instructed by his senior to inform all volunteers that the IRA would not engage militarily with the British forces to ensure that the civil rights march passed off peacefully,'' said The Times adding that Mr. McGuinnnes would insist that all the IRA members he spoke to agreed with plans for a peaceful demonstration against the march.

Mr. McGuinness, who was then 21, is widely known to have been an IRA activist and served two jail sentences for that, but his decision to acknowledge it publicly and formally is said to be significant in view of the IRA's strict code of secrecy.

Guardian said Mr. McGuinness who played a key role in negotiating the Good Friday agreement on behalf of the Sinn Fein and emerged as a man of peace had been under ``great pressure to give evidence to the tribunal and a refusal would have laid him open to the charges of hypocrisy when Sinn Fein is deeply critical of what it sees as the Ministry of Defence's conspiracy of silence''.

The British security forces have consistently maintained that they fired in self-defence and in the face of provocation but, according to The Independent, the proceedings before the tribunal ``so far have created or confirmed the distinct impression that the paratroops and other soldiers involved in the incident were unjustified in opening fire as they did''.

Mr. McGuinness' testimony would lend strength to that `impression'. It said some observers believed that his appearance before the tribunal - not expected until next year - would be an implicit indication by the IRA that it now wanted to put its terrorist past behind it. Mr. McGuinnnes who is also an MP is expected to give a detailed account of the events on the Bloody Sunday which remains one of the most painful episodes in Northern Ireland's recent sectarian history.

Those opposed to the Good Friday agreement were quick to seize on it saying the presence of a former IRA leader on the power- sharing executive exposed it as a `farce'. A Sinn Fein spokesman played down its significance ruling out its impact on the peace process.

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