Word: sinns
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...being a British agent for more than 20 years, his treachery didn't trigger the normal end for informers - a hasty, secret court-martial and a bullet in the back of the head; only five months before, the IRA had renounced violence for good, and so its political arm, Sinn Fein, promised that Donaldson would be left alone...
...much more than settling old scores. Donaldson was killed two days before the Prime Ministers of Britain and Ireland, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, were due to launch a joint plan for reviving the faltering political process in Northern Ireland. Thanks to continuing mistrust between Protestant unionist leaders and Sinn Fein, efforts to restart the kind of coalition local government that was borne out of the 1998 Good Friday peace accords have been stalled for the past three years. And the murder of Donaldson, a convicted IRA bomber who served time in prison along with Sinn Fein head Gerry Adams...
...taken it into their own hands to extract revenge on the man they blamed for putting them in jail or sending other comrades to their deaths. Other Republican splinter groups opposed to the peace process certainly had enough motivation to do it. On the other hand, some members of Sinn Fein have implied that the same people who got Donaldson to become spy in the mid 1980s had their own reasons to silence him, since he remained a threat to divulge further details of Britain's counter-terror operations...
...Much of the current political stalemate in Northern Ireland, in fact, can be traced back to Donaldson himself. As head of Sinn Fein's administrative offices at the Northern Ireland assembly in the late 90s, Donaldson was accused by Britain of spying for the IRA, accusations which helped bring down Northern Ireland's landmark power sharing local government in 2002 amidst mutual suspicions and recrimination. Only after those charges were suddenly dropped against Donaldson and two others last December did he reveal on national TV the stunning news that he in fact had been on the British intelligence payroll...
...party is shifting between tough-guy talk and moderation-a balancing act similar to the one practiced by Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland and by Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. As it gains power, Hamas may come under pressure from Europe and the U.S to open talks with Israel- which senior Hamas officials last week said they would consider. But negotiating a settlement that recognizes Israel's right to exist would also force Hamas to renounce the ideology on which it was founded. "Sometimes they must pray that they don't win a majority and have to become responsible," says...