Sinn Fein leader touts Bush efforts

Associated Press

SEATTLE — Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Thursday he was encouraged by the recent attention President Bush has paid to the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Adams said he looks forward to the day when peace is so well rooted there that the "boredom of normality" prevails.

"The president obviously has lots of other issues to focus his attention on," Adams said. "But this White House administration is focused on assisting in whatever way it can."

Adams spoke at a World Affairs Council luncheon before going to San Francisco to conclude his weeklong tour of the country. He planned to return to Belfast this weekend, making Sunday the first St. Patrick’s Day he has spent in Northern Ireland since 1994.

He usually spends the holiday in the United States pushing Sinn Fein’s agenda. Sinn Fein is the political party affiliated with the Irish Republican Army.

Adams met with Bush on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., then devoted much of his Seattle talk to the 1998 Good Friday peace accords negotiated by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell. The accords established the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing legislature that governs Northern Ireland, which is about 55 percent Protestant and 40 percent Catholic.

"We have a long way to go in the peace process back home," Adams said. "It’s much short of what Irish republicans want. It’s short, I’m sure, of what others want."

But he added, "I think it has largely worked. … Had I come 10 years ago and outlined what is happening in Ireland, people would have been incredulous. No human problem is intractable."

Bush, who devoted little attention to Northern Ireland in the first year of his presidency, held four meetings with Irish leaders Wednesday. He lauded the work of the power-sharing assembly, efforts to make the predominantly Protestant police force more palatable to Catholics and the IRA’s disarming for the first time.