SINN FEIN MPs will be allowed to use House of Commons facilities without having to swear the oath of allegiance to the
Queen after MPs overwhelmingly supported the move in a free vote
last night.
MPs voted by 322 votes to 189 following an emotional debate to
allow the four Sinn Fein MPs, who have chosen not to take their
seats, to use offices in Parliament and claim expenses.
Each of the MPs will be entitled for allowances and expenses to an
annual sum that could exceed £100,000. They will lose only their
salary of £51,822 for their continued refusal to take the oath of
allegiance.
As his party was at last breaching the doors of the Westminster
establishment, Gerry Adams was in Communist Cuba
commemorating an event that inspired his republican movement for
two decades.
The Sinn Fein president had flown to Havana to remember the 1981
IRA hunger strike. However, the ceremony to inaugurate a
memorial to Bobby Sands and nine other hunger strikers who died at
the Maze was transformed into a tirade against the war in
Afghanistan. As Mr Adams looked on warily in a shady Havana
park, a senior Cuban official called the conflict “ethnic genocide”.
Speaking to a small audience, including the visiting Sinn Fein
delegation, Sergio Corrieri, president of the Cuban Institute for
People’s Friendship, compared the conduct of the Thatcher
Government during the 1981 conduct of the Thatcher Government
during the 1981 hunger strikes to “the new crimes being witnessed
today in Afghanistan and Palestine”.
Señor Corrieri, who is a member of the Cuban Council of State, the
country’s highest authority, went on to call the war “a calculated
massacre of civilians” being conducted “in violation of the most
elementary respect for human rights”.
Mr Adams confined his own remarks to a eulogy on the human
bravery and self-sacrifice of the ten hunger strikers, who he said
gave their lives for the freedom and independence of Northern
Ireland.
Asked afterwards for his own view of the war effort, he distanced
himself from Señor Corrieri’s remarks, saying that he believed “it
was necessary” to bring the perpetrators of the September 11
attacks to justice. He said that he was more concerned about the
millions of Afghans who were “facing starvation” in the face of a
harsh winter. “There needs to be a humanitarian response,” he said.
After a long-awaited meeting on Monday night with President
Castro, Mr Adams brushed aside questions about Cuba’s one-party
system and its much-criticised human rights record.
“This is very much a popular struggle in which people have had
advantages from being born in this island,” he said.
While Mr Adams has strongly rejected the United States’s
economic embargo against Cuba during his visit, noting that it has
been condemned repeatedly at the United Nations, he has made no
mention of similar UN votes regarding Cuba’s human rights record.
It is issues such as this that have aroused concern over Mr
Adams’s trip to Cuba in the Irish-American lobby, where Sinn Fein
raises most of its funds.
Mr Adams recognises that his visit might “present difficulties” with
the Bush Administration and Sinn Fein’s supporters in the US.
Thanking his “good friends” in America - including Presidents
Bush and Clinton - for their support during the Northern Ireland
peace process, he hoped that they would “understand” his position.
