Sinn Féin is not trying to secure an amnesty for paramilitaries on the run but is trying to close a loophole in the Belfast Agreement, party president Mr Gerry Adams said today.
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Mr Gerry Adams. Photograph: Reuters
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Mr Adams, speaking at the launch of his party's annual Easter Lily campaign commemorating the 1916 Rising, accused the Conservative Party of using the amnesty issue for their own political gain.
The West Belfast MP said at Stormont: "We are not looking for an amnesty. Let's just be very, very clear about this. This issue has been seized upon for entirely domestic, political reasons by the Tory Party to have a go at the Labour Party in Britain. In many ways you get the Unionist Party dragged along on all this.
"The Good Friday Agreement, for organisations which were on ceasefire, allowed for an accelerated release programme for the prisoners and supporters of those organisations. There was an anomaly. We pointed it out at the time. We pointed it out at the time the legislation was produced," he said.
"I have dealt now with three secretaries of state on the issue that a number of people against whom warrants were issued, a relatively small number of people, had they been in prison and had not escaped or absconded on bail or whatever happened to be the particular circumstances, they would have been released. That loophole now needs to be sorted out".
Mr Adams also claimed the Irish and British governments had committed themselves to addressing the issue during last summer's peace process talks at Weston Park.
There was no dissension, he said, from the Unionists or the nationalist SDLP.
PA