THE STORMONT Assembly has backed a DUP call for the British government to press Libya for compensation for victims of the IRA. Sinn Féin opposed the motion, claiming it was partisan.
MPs Nigel Dodds, the DUP deputy leader, and Jeffrey Donaldson are planning to lobby members of the Gadafy regime in Tripoli to compensate the families of those killed by the IRA using Libyan-supplied weapons and explosives.
Forwarding the motion, Mr Donaldson told the Assembly on its first day of the new political term: “Citizens of Northern Ireland, both unionist and nationalist, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, were injured by IRA bombs. It is not a party political issue. Justice should be done. Victims of terrorism should be compensated for the loss.”
However, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said the issue was “partisan” but added the party was not opposed to helping victims. “It would have been better if the other parties had been consulted. This motion suggests there is a hierarchy of victims,” he said, and the DUP motion “fails on this important measure”.
He referred to the role of the British government in the killing of citizens in Ireland and in collusion with loyalist death squads. He cited the case of former loyalist agent Brian Nelson sent to buy arms from apartheid South Africa.
He said neither the DUP nor any other unionist party had recognised the role played by the British government in the conflict. “The very government you are asking to lobby the Libyans are refusing to help inquiries,” he said. He also criticised the SDLP’s decision to back the motion even though its amendment was not accepted by the Speaker as “short-sighted”.
Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey cited republican “sponsorship of terror” in Colombia. He said Libyan weapons in IRA hands had brought decades of misery and said his party would back the motion. SDLP spokesman Alex Attwood said many had died not just at the hands of the IRA but also at the hands of agencies working with the British government.