Adams criticises CIRA commitment to violence

The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has criticised the Continuity IRA (CIRA) after it said that its campaign of violence would continue and that republicans and nationalists should boycott elections.

In its Easter statement, the Continuity IRA said it would continue its "militant campaign" against the British presence in Northern Ireland.

The CIRA is the only republican group formally not on ceasefire, although other dissident republicans, including some aligned to the "Real IRA", which is purportedly on ceasefire, are believed to have been involved in paramilitary attacks.

In February, the CIRA bombed a hotel in Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh. It has also carried out previous bomb attacks in Co Fermanagh and was responsible for the bombing of Markethill, Co Armagh, in 1997.

The group, in its statement to the Irish News in Belfast, criticised the peace process and said the British government was imposing a veto on negotiations.

"This so-called process has been exposed as a sham, and a device whereby formerly militant republicans could be hoodwinked into adopting not only a constitutional path, but urged by sections of their leadership to surrender the means of defence, demobilise and ultimately disband," it said.

It called for a boycott of elections to ensure "no partitionist assembly will have the endorsement of the vast majority of Irish people".

Mr Adams described the CIRA as "a small micro group" to whom he did not want to give any credence.

The call for an election boycott was "rather pathetic at a time when the Sinn Fein vote in West Tyrone has doubled. So clearly these people are operating in a total vacuum, and are not living in the real world," he said.

Over Easter "tens of thousands" of republicans would turn out at 1916 commemorations to endorse the strategies of Sinn Fein, and the strategies that the IRA had endorsed "in terms of the continuation of their cessation".