[Sinn Fein]

14th May 2003


Adams calls for full disclosure on activities of Britain's Secret Agencies

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams MP will tonight address a republican commemoration in the Ulster Hall in Belfast. (Below are extracts of remarks he is expected to make. These can be used on that basis prior to his speech.) Mr Adams will say:

``The process is in deep trouble. The multiple suspensions of the Assembly by the British government; the rejection by the governments and the unionists of seismic initiatives by republicans; the failure to implement the Good Friday Agreement; and the cancellation of the elections, have all created a political vacuum.

``This is being filled by those who letter-bombed the UUP office; by the continued activities of unionist paramilitaries; and by the securocrats. There is now a period of uncertainty with the upcoming marching season and the threat, which is posed to beleaguered nationalist communities as summer approaches.

`` All of this arises from the strategic and scientific application of a programme for change which Sinn Fein has been pursuing. There is a battle between those who want to maximise the change and those who want to minimise it.

`` By creating a vacuum the British government has given an advantage to those who want to stop the change. Evidence of this is abundant in the avalanche of briefings by the securocrats of a largely compliant and unquestioning media.

`` What agenda is being served by all of this?

`` And what do we do about it?

`` The agenda being pursued is a wreckers agenda!

`` The conflict here requires a political solution - that is self-evident. But for year's attempts to bring about a political solution was prevented. Those within the British system, who want to cover- up the practice of illegal and criminal behaviour, including the killing of citizens, are opposing it now.

The responsibility to stop them rests with the two governments, but especially with the British government. Mr, Blair has to call a halt to the activities of the wreckers in his system.

`` And people here who are the victims of collusion between the state and unionist death squads; who are the victims of Brian Nelson and the UDA and Ulster Resistance, and of FRU and the Joint Services Group, which replaced it; and who lost relatives in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and other similar actions; all have a right to the truth,

`` There should be full disclosure by this government of the strategies and activities of Britain's secret agencies in the north over the last 30 years.''


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