IRISH UNREST Sinn Fein asks for talks

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33061, 31 October 1972, Page 17

IRISH UNREST Sinn Fein asks for talks

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) DUBLIN, October 30. The former head of the militant Provisional wing of the LRA. in Belfast, Joe Cahill, told the annual conference of the Sinn Fein, the political wing of the 1.R.A., in Dublin last night that I.R.A. leaders were holding secret talks with Protestants in Ulster, and had been doing so for a year.

The conference delegates then voted unanimously for a resolution inviting “members of Loyalist (Protestant) organisations to discussions on the subject of how best we can both serve Ireland and the Irish people.” In Belfast, however, a spokesman for the Right-wing Protestant Ulster Vanguard Movement, said: “The U.V.M. has not at any time met the 1.R.A., and it is not likely that the latest move by the Provisional wing will bring about any change whatsoever in Vanguard policy.” Previous reports of secret talks between the I.R.A. and Protestants have always been denied by the Ulster Defence Association, the main Protestant para-military organisation. The U.V.M. spokesman added: “The I.R.A. men have been, and are still, perpetrators of vile deeds against the people of Ulster, and we are not prepared to sit round a table with murderers.” The Sinn Fein conference —the 1000 delegates to which at one point left the hail because of a bomb scare—accepted a resolution laying down three proposals to bring peace to the British province. It called on the British Government to: acknowledge the rights of the Irish people to determine [ their own future; to announce j a date for the withdrawal ofi British armed forces from Northern Ireland; and to de-| clare a general amnesty fori all political prisoners and for all on the “wanted” list. 1

Police and Army leaders in the Irish Republic also met in Dublin yesterday, to discuss an overnight series of bombings and arson attacks on four Dublin hotels and the city’s busiest railway station. The police are working on the theory that the devices were planted by Protestant extremists from Northern Ireland as a protest against the Sinn Fein conference, but the U.D.A.. which has in the past claimed responsibility for raids across the border, has denied that it had anything to do with the Dublin disturbances. Seven I.R.A. Provisional wing guerrillas, including four from Ulster, escaped from a top-securitv military detention centre ’3O miles south of Dublin last night. They made their escape through a tunnel leading to the periphery wall of the Curragh camp, in County Kildare and used ropes to scale the wall. They were driven off in waiting vehicles. Drugs drive South Korea’s martial law command has begun a drive to curb crimes involving narcotics. General Jae-hyun Ro, the martial law commander, has told Army investigators | and civilian officials to root [out the production and traf- : ticking of drugs throughout the country, concentrating on [areas near American military compounds where trade in [drugs is said to be a thriving 'business.—Seoul, Oct. 30.