McAleese denies pushing SF `agenda'

The Fianna Fail/PD presidential candidate, Prof Mary McAleese, yesterday denied allegations that she was "pushing a Sinn Fein agenda". She said she has no intention of stepping down as a candidate.

At a press conference on the Aran Islands, she said information in further leaked Department of Foreign Affairs documents was unconfirmed. Asked about yesterday's call by the Alliance leader, Lord Alderdice, for her to sacrifice her candidacy for the peace process, she said: "I wonder has he got a fix on exactly what is going on here, any more than anybody, because there is a lot of confusion around."

She said he might be confusing documents relating to her and unpublished documents "that have nothing to do with me at all but have got to do with the peace process".

She was asked about her level of contact with the Sinn Fein leader, Mr Gerry Adams, following allegations in the documents she had regular contact with him. On Friday's Late Late Show, she stated she was not on speaking terms with Mr Adams to the extent that she could ask him not to endorse her candidacy.

She said: "Over the period, (and I said this quite openly on Questions and Answers that part of the work that we did in the (Redemptorist) Peace Ministry, and it spanned the two ceasefires, that's quite a long period), we did have meetings on a reasonably regular basis. We didn't have monthly meetings but, on an as-needs basis, we met with members of Sinn Fein and the SDLP."

????ein members she met, She said the discussions "involved very well-known members of Sinn Fein and very, very well-known members of the SDLP".

Asked to clarify her relationship with Mr Adams in the light of new details, she said: "I'm on speaking terms with you because you've followed me now for a while. I think I've probably met you more times now than I've ever met Gerry Adams. I don't know what you want to insinuate by that . . . "

She added: "I go into meetings, very formal meetings, and these were very formal meetings. He's not a personal friend. He's not a person I go out with at night. He's not a person that I converse with in the normal course of events."

She continued: "I think what I was trying to indicate is, very clearly, that I'm not a member of Sinn Fein. I'm not a supporter of Sinn Fein and to the extent that you or anybody else has tried to indicate that I am and that there is some mystery here, let me absolutely reassure you, for probably I don't know how many times now, that there is not."

Prof McAleese said she "barely" knew the former SDLP senator, Mrs Brid Rodgers. "That was the very first time I met her; was in that context." She said she had "no intention of opening up for the curiosity of journalists, and only really to feed the curiosity of journalists, everything that was said in those meetings".

Asked to respond to the new documents, she said it was "exactly the same story" which related to "comments allegedly made by Brid Rodgers and allegedly transcribed so I don't know how accurate those are".

"If they were as inaccurate and as mischievously spun out as those that were made in relation to me, then, frankly, I've nothing to fear from them, because if they're that inaccurate, I don't see why I should have to deal with them at all."

She said she believed she could still build bridges to the unionist community. "I love the unionist community. I mean, I grew up among them all my life, as a child growing up I grew up in the unionist community. I know very, very well first of all the fears of that community and the suspicions of that community.

"And I also know the warmth that is in there and I have very good reason to know it because of the tremendous response I've had, both from my friends in the unionist community and many people who do not know me."

She said suggestions that she had Sinn Fein sympathies were ironic "if you look at my track record".

"I'm a board member of Channel 4, I'm a member of the board of Northern Ireland Electricity. Just a very short time ago, a little over a year ago, I, along with Sir Rupert Smith, the officer commanding the troops in Northern Ireland, was invited to a very private luncheon with her Majesty the Queen, which I was delighted to attend, and I talked to her there about Northern Ireland around a very small lunch table.

"I don't imagine for one moment that had I the credentials that some people are mischievously trying to ascribe to me that I would, for one moment, have been there."

Asked if she was happy with Sinn Fein's election success, she said she had offered to help the SDLP's Mr Eddie McGrady to get the views of people "whom I thought were people whose views I would have known politically". She phoned a number of people and "was amazed to learn how many of them said to me that they were either going to vote Sinn Fein this time around . . ."