International

IRA urged to give up violence

LONDON: British Prime Minister Tony Blair planned to meet Northern Ireland's hard-line Protestant and Catholic leaders in the hope of reviving a stalled power-sharing agreement.

Gerry Adams, whose Sinn Fein party is backed by most Catholics, repeated his call for the Irish Republican Army to abandon its ``armed struggle'' in favour of politics.

``I have set out my position. I am not going to move from it. It is my hope that Republicans right across the island and elsewhere will embrace that position,'' Mr. Adams told the Associated Press ahead of his meeting with Mr. Blair.

Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists, who represent most of Northern Ireland's British Protestant majority, trounced their moderate rivals in elections earlier this month.

Their dominant positions make them essential in any future power-sharing administration, the central goal of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord of 1998. But the Democratic Unionists refuse to cooperate with Sinn Fein until the IRA disarms and disbands, a position backed by the British, Irish and American Governments.

Mr. Adams (56), an IRA commander for the past three decades, last month appealed officially to IRA members to abandon its ``armed struggle.''

Mr. Adams, who denies ever being a member of the IRA, said there was ``no time scale'' for a response. ``That is a matter for that organisation''. — AP

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