Plans for Ms Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, vice-chair of the 32County Sovereignty Movement, to visit the US next month are being reconsidered after the Omagh bombing, according to a New York lawyer who helped arrange her last trip. Mr Martin Galvin said he did not know whether her visa application for a visit in late September had been withdrawn or was still going forward. The visit was to express objections to the Belfast Agreement.
He told The Irish Times he had spoken to her since the bombing but they had not discussed plans for her US visit.
He said that contrary to some reports, she and her husband had not fled their home in Dundalk but the children had been sent away for safety.
It would be regrettable if Ms Sands-McKevitt were to be denied a US visa as this would be "a policy of censorship by visa denial which would be wrong", Mr Galvin said.
The US needed to know all viewpoints including those of Ms Sands-McKevitt and those who say that the Belfast Agreement "is not a step forward but will delay the resolution of the Irish conflict by allowing the British to continue to deny Irish national sovereignty".
Mr Galvin said the 32-County Sovereignty Movement was "totally separate" from the military organisation or `Real IRA' in the same way Sinn Fein was separate from the Provisional IRA.
He would not comment on a statement of Congressman Peter King this week that "the `Real IRA' and the 32-County Sovereignty Committee have no support among Irish-Americans. We know them for what they are - vicious murderers who are attempting to destroy the Good Friday Agreement and the cause of peace and justice in Ireland."
Mr Galvin, a former director of publicity for Noraid, was "deeply saddened and stunned to learn of the Omagh tragedy".
He understood there were "a number of warnings which were intended to ensure that no civilians were injured and that no civilians would be at risk, but that does not absolve anyone of responsibility in the context of what happened".
He asked people "to look at the context of the whole situation of British rule in Ireland". He said that "British rule and the denial of Irish national sovereignty had caused conflict in Ireland so often and will do so again".
Asked about his plans for fund-raising for dissident republican prisoners not covered by the Belfast Agreement, Mr Galvin said that a new newspaper had been started but "we are now looking at the whole situation".