3.2.05
Guardian
**Earlier today in the Guardian, Murphy was pronouncing on the IRA. I won't include the whole article, but this part I found interesting for McGuinness' assessment:
Murphy: IRA not preparing to go back to war
Matthew Tempest and agencies
Thursday February 3, 2005
...This morning Sinn Féin shifted the blame back to the British and Irish governments for last night's IRA withdrawal of an arms decommissioning offer, saying the entire peace process was now in "deep crisis".
Speaking the morning after the IRA formally withdrew its offer of allowing full inspections of arms dumps, Mr McGuinness said Mr Blair and the Irish taoiseach Bertie Ahern had been too quick to buy into the "opinion" of one police officer over December's £26m bank raid, blamed on the republican terrorists by Northern Ireland chief constable Hugh Orde.
Although Downing Street has kept its nerve in the face of the IRA move, calling it "not unexpected", it comes just six days after Mr Blair met both Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness for face-to-face talks at Chequers.
But as the war of words escalated this morning, Mr McGuinness told the BBC: "The real difficulty here is that the two governments have opted for confrontation.
"The IRA statement is obviously a direct consequence of the retrograde stance of the two governments, and I think it is evidence of a deepening crisis."
Refusing to accept the IRA were guilty of the December bank raid, he said the whole crisis had been created by the "opinion" voiced by Mr Orde that the IRA was responsible for the Northern Bank raid, which was then taken up by Mr Blair and Mr Ahern.
"These are opinions. Would you like to be convicted on the word of the chief of police, because that is what we are talking about here.
"We are talking about an entire process being held hostage to what is an opinion. What we have to deal with is facts. We cannot allow any situation where the justice system is set aside and effectively all decisions are taken by chiefs of police, prime ministers or international monitoring commissions made up of three spooks and a British lord."
**Earlier today in the Guardian, Murphy was pronouncing on the IRA. I won't include the whole article, but this part I found interesting for McGuinness' assessment:
Murphy: IRA not preparing to go back to war
Matthew Tempest and agencies
Thursday February 3, 2005
...This morning Sinn Féin shifted the blame back to the British and Irish governments for last night's IRA withdrawal of an arms decommissioning offer, saying the entire peace process was now in "deep crisis".
Speaking the morning after the IRA formally withdrew its offer of allowing full inspections of arms dumps, Mr McGuinness said Mr Blair and the Irish taoiseach Bertie Ahern had been too quick to buy into the "opinion" of one police officer over December's £26m bank raid, blamed on the republican terrorists by Northern Ireland chief constable Hugh Orde.
Although Downing Street has kept its nerve in the face of the IRA move, calling it "not unexpected", it comes just six days after Mr Blair met both Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness for face-to-face talks at Chequers.
But as the war of words escalated this morning, Mr McGuinness told the BBC: "The real difficulty here is that the two governments have opted for confrontation.
"The IRA statement is obviously a direct consequence of the retrograde stance of the two governments, and I think it is evidence of a deepening crisis."
Refusing to accept the IRA were guilty of the December bank raid, he said the whole crisis had been created by the "opinion" voiced by Mr Orde that the IRA was responsible for the Northern Bank raid, which was then taken up by Mr Blair and Mr Ahern.
"These are opinions. Would you like to be convicted on the word of the chief of police, because that is what we are talking about here.
"We are talking about an entire process being held hostage to what is an opinion. What we have to deal with is facts. We cannot allow any situation where the justice system is set aside and effectively all decisions are taken by chiefs of police, prime ministers or international monitoring commissions made up of three spooks and a British lord."
