Virtual New York. Wednesday, 15 August 2001 1:41 (ET).
LONDON, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- The Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams, plans to
visit Cuba next month, reports said Wednesday.
The visit could further damage the special relationship between the Irish
republican movement and the White House, The Telegraph of London reported.
Sinn Fein announced Monday that Adams would visit Cuba and meet Castro. He
was expected to visit the communist Caribbean state in the spring of this year
but cancelled the trip.
Sinn Fein has long been a supporter of Castro's Cuba. During the Clinton
administration the political wing of the Irish Republican Army played down its
admiration for the Cuban leader because it did not want to upset its friends in
the White House.
Adams' decision to "go ahead with the visit despite certain
disapproval from President Bush suggests that this Irish-American relationship
is beginning to cool," the report said.
In September 1981, Castro caused a walkout by the British and American
delegations to the 63rd conference of the Inter-parliamentary Union in Havana
when he supported IRA hunger strikers in his speech.
IRA also has links with other left wing movements in South America. On
Monday, an army spokesman in Bogota said they had arrested three IRA suspects
who were training leftist guerrillas in Colombia.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International. | 
