FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: The Brehon Law Society of Nassau County
Re: Visa Restrictions Placed on Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams

Date: November 8, 2005

The Brehon Law Society of Nassau County, New York wishes to register its deep disappointed at the ill advised decision by the U.S. State Department to tie a fundraising restriction to the visa issued to Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams for a trip which was to have taken place this week to our country.

During his trip Adams was to have addressed Irish American supporters of his party and to perceive a peace prize from a prestigious foreign policy institute whose efforts to persuade the State Department to allow Adams' entry to this country in the 1990 fostered a dialogue which led directly to the end of the thirty year old war in Ireland and real hope for a political solution to the centuries old conflict over Ireland's sovereignty.

The people who will be gathering this week in New York and at other venues to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Sinn Féin, Ireland's oldest political party, had hoped to hear a first hand report from that party's president as to his party's recent successes in furthering the Irish peace process.

The most recent and truly historic successes have included the declaration by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in July that it was standing down and dedicating itself to exclusively peaceful means of furthering Irish Republican aims, followed in September by the decommissioning and destruction of its entire arsenal under the observation of an international commission created under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement for that purpose.

The Good Friday Agreement is an agreement with the status of an international treaty. It was negotiated by the Irish and British governments, and by the major Northern Ireland political parties, including, most significantly, Sinn Féin, and ratified by the huge majority of the voters in both parts of Ireland in 1998.

The negotiations which produced the agreement were brokered by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who was sent to Ireland for that purpose by President Bill Clinton. The implementation of that agreement has been a long, delicate and difficult process, furthered greatly by the encouragement and support of both the Clinton and Bush administrations in the years since 1998.

It is no exaggeration to say that the process would not have begun, or survived, without the initial efforts of Bill Clinton and his envoy George Mitchell, and the later efforts of President Bush and his successive envoys Richard Haas and Mitchell Reiss. It is for this reason that we and other Irish American supporters of the peace process and our country's vital role in it are so dismayed by this week's decision. We had expected more from the White House than allowing itself to be manipulated by political rivals of Sinn Féin into helping them deliver a cheap, partisan political snub at the expense of the peace process.

Our government's involvement in resolving the conflict has been so valuable for the very reason that it went to pains to treat all parties on an equal footing. That value has now, sadly, been greatly compromised.
 

Robert P. Lynch, Vice President, Brehon Law Society of Nassau County

The Brehon Law Society is a group of Irish American attorneys and other individuals interested in using their talents to further the cause of human rights in Ireland and elsewhere. Visit their web site at www.brehonlaw.org.