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US visitors to meet SF delegates Mark Simpson

Irish-Americans on a fact-finding mission to Ireland today will meet a Sinn Fein delegation which includes Martin McGuinness.

The group has already met the Republic's Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, and Ulster Secretary of State Sir Patrick Mayhew, and today it completes its three-day visit with talks in west Belfast with Sinn Fein.

Mr McGuinness, who is one of four in the delegation due to meet the Americans, was branded "Britain's number one terrorist" by a TV documentary last month. He vociferously denied the claim.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams will lead the team which meets the Irish-Americans, who are led by former US Congressman Bruce Morrison.

Sinn Fein plans to host a reception for the US visitors before the afternoon talks. A party spokesman said: "It will involve community activists from nationalist parts of west Belfast. It is not an exclusively republican reception."

Mr Morrison will also meet the Alliance Party today - despite a rebuke for him and his colleagues yesterday by the party chairman, Dr Philip McGarry.

Alliance

Dr McGarry claimed Alliance had been snubbed by the US visitors and said: "Mr Morrison's credibility as a supposedly independent observer must be called into question when he finds it important to meet Sinn Fein, a party which appears to condone the murder of Irish people, but not the Alliance Party, the foremost advocate of peace."

However, it emerged today that the Irish-Americans had since contacted Alliance. Dr McGarry claimed it had been in response to the earlier statement and he welcomed the decision.

Mr Morrison and his colleagues travelled to Londonderry to meet SDLP leader John Hume this morning. The former US Congressman was unavailable for comment.

The DUP has refused to meet the US visitors because of their intention to speak to Sinn Fein. The Ulster Unionists yesterday met the group at its Glengall Street headquarters.

Mr Morrison said yesterday the group was in Ireland in a purely personal capacity, but would be reporting its findings to public and private officials on its return to the United States. The group supports the idea of a special US envoy being sent to Northern Ireland.
