M.P. urges action against Ireland

Press, 28 May 1984, Page 10

M.P. urges action against Ireland

NZPA-Reuter Baliynahinch The veteran Right-wing politician, Enoch Powell, has accused the United States and Ireland of prolonging sectarian strife in Northern Ireland and called on Britain to take action. “The killing continues because the Irish Republic enables and aids it to continue,” the 71-year-old British member of Parliament told a local party meeting at the week-end. Ireland was a foreign State, which claimed the British-ruled province as its own, and permitted a terrorist campaign in that province to be based and organised on its territory, he said. “We must treat the republic exactly as any other nation would treat a neighbouring State that behaved in that way. “This will not be to the taste of the United States, which sees Ireland, as it sees the countries of Central America as a playground for American policy and strategy,” he said. Speaking only a week before President Rjtaald

Reagan is due to begin a three-day visit to Ireland, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister said that Britain also had a message for the United States: “It consists of two words — get lost. “They have poked their noses for too long into the business of the United Kingdom, and sided too long with those who dispute our territorial integrity," Mr Powell said, apparently referring to support given

by some Americans to Irish Republican guerrillas fighting British rule in the province. He called on Britain to retaliate. “It is within our power to prove to the Irish Republic that for every murder committed in its cause in Ulster, it shall be the worse for the republic whom we shall hold responsible.” Mr Powell who has held his rural South Down constituency for the staunchly pro-British Official Unionist Party since 1974, did not specify what measures should be taken. But the “Sunday Express” newspaper said that some Irish could take his words to mean that Britain should be prepared to mount military operations in the republic. “Mr Powell may merely have had economic sanctions rather than military operations in mind,” it said. “But whatever the action, he was in no doubt that it should hurt.” More than 2300 people have been killed in the province since sectarian and political violence flared in 196 Sta.