DUBLIN (AP) — The senior Sinn Fein official in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government says the British and Irish governments are in secret negotiations with IRA dissidents in hopes they can be persuaded to abandon violence.
Britain and Ireland insist publicly it’s pointless to talk to Irish Republican Army splinter groups, which continue to mount occasional bomb and gun attacks in the British territory of Northern Ireland.
But Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commmander who led secret talks with Britain that inspired the IRA’s original 1994 cease-fire, said Thursday he’s certain that both governments are talking to dissident representatives.
McGuinness said he hopes the dissidents are persuaded “of their inability to destroy the peace process.”
