Bruton repeats call to SF

THE Taoiseach renewed his challenge to Sinn Fein to say if it supported the armed struggle of the IRA.

"No question could be simpler or more fundamental. We are asking Sinn Fein to answer that question."

Sinn Fein, Mr Bruton said, had obtained many votes in the recent Northern elections on the basis that it was working on a peace strategy. He did not believe that the party would have got those votes if it had indicated to the people of the North that it would continue to support an armed strategy of the IRA that involved bombs, in Manchester and armed robberies in the Republic.

The multi party talks would go on, he said, because they were the best hope for the Irish people. "We have fought long and hard, politically, to have those talks start on the best possible basis."

He said the republican movement had spent many months saying that it wanted peace talks now. It had got that opportunity for a full week on terms carefully worked out to make it as easy as possible for Sinn Fein to participate and have a basis foregoing to the IRA and asking them to stop.

But the IRA reaction had been the killing of a member of the Garda in Adare and the shattering of the peace of the city of Manchester. "It has been an action that creates maximum difficulty for Irish people living in Britain."

The Manchester bomb, he added, was planned to coincide with the ending of the first week of talks.

"What image of Ireland is presented by the bombers to the people of Manchester? What image of Ireland is presented by the IRA to the people of Germany and the Netherlands who will be reporting back on this, perhaps for them, their first ever contact with any Irish phenomenon?

"If the people in the IRA cared about Ireland at all, they would care about how we as a people are seen in the world at large. Unfortunately, the image of people with glass embedded in their faces, bleeding as a result of an IRA bomb, is the image that the IRA is seeking to implant as a mental image of this country in the eyes of people all over the world.

"Nothing could be more unpatriotic, nothing could be more anti national, nothing could be more contrary to a true sense of Irishness than the activities of the IRA. The IRA does not represent Ireland. It is anti Irish, it is an organisation that is antipathetic to the interests of Irish people. It is an organisation that is antipathetic to the interests of peace and reconciliation.

Describing the bomb attack as "callous", the Fianna Fail leader Mr Bertie Ahern, said the elected members of the Dail, without exception, condemned the totally unwarranted attack against the entire civilian population of Manchester. The bomb attack and the murder of Det Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare had undermined peace in Ireland.

"We in Fianna Fail regard the restoration of the ceasefire as an absolute necessity."

He urged the Government to steer a steady course and not allow anyone to close off the window of opportunity of a renewed ceasefire.

The PD leader, Ms Mary Harney, said it was time to get tough with Sinn Fein and urged the Government to cut off all official contacts with the party. "How many more acts of violence will it take before the IRA and Sinn Fein decide that democratic politics is the way forward and not through bombs and bullets?"

Because the Government had been tough with Sinn Fein last week, it had received a halfhearted comment from it regarding Det Garda Jerry McCabe's murder in Adare. "While the leader of Sinn Fein could not bring himself to condemn it, he was prepared to repudiate it."