Britain is unjustly fixated on the IRA while ignoring loyalist paramilitary violence and political intransigence, Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams has claimed.
"The British government still sees a ceasefire IRA as the enemy and unionist violence or opposition to the agreement as in some way tolerable," Mr Gerry Adams said in an interview published today.
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Mr Adams, who calls accusations he was once an IRA activist "nonsense", said the clamour for the IRA to disband was unjustified given it was already on ceasefire and had made big concessions.
The IRA has twice disposed of a quantity of arms, and recently apologised for its civilian victims while loyalist gangs were acting with impunity, Mr Adams said.
"There's this focus on the IRA which hasn't helped anybody," Mr Adams said at Sinn Féin's office on the Falls Road in Belfast. He said his party supported future IRA disbandment in principle, but would not be drawn on when that could happen.
"Obviously, part of the Sinn Fein peace strategy is about bringing an end to physical force republicanism and trying to bring about a society which is genuinely at peace," he said.
"Do we achieve it by issuing ultimatums? Do we achieve it by walking away from processes? How was that agenda advanced by suspension?" he asked.
Mr Adams added: "What do they think that they're going to do, that we're going to sort of arm-lock the IRA into disbanding itself?"
He said Britain should now concentrate on pressing forward with its commitments to demilitarize and reform policing under the Belfast Agreement. "This isn't a 'disband the IRA' process. This is a Good Friday agreement process which is about creating a totally new dispensation."