Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, December 17, 2001
Sinn Fein Leader Adams Visits Cuba
Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams arrived in Cuba for a visit intended to focus on remembering participants of a dramatic Irish Republican Army hunger strike 20 years ago.
Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams arrived in Cuba for a visit intended to focus on remembering participants of a dramatic Irish Republican Army hunger strike 20 years ago.
During the four-day visit that began Sunday, Adams was expected to meet with President Fidel Castro and thank him for his solidarity with the hunger strikers in Northern Ireland. A ceremony will be held to remember the ten prisoners who starved themselves to death during the protest.
Adams, whose Irish Republican Army-linked party plays down its socialist politics during fund-raising tours to the United States, originally planned to visit Cuba in October. The visit was delayed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Adams and several party deputies also planned to meet with other Cuban officials and visit a local hospital and university during their stay.
The trip was expected to provide political fodder for Castro's enemies in Miami's Cuban exile community, who continually try to link the communist government here with terrorism.
Havana officially halted all financial and technical support of revolutionary movements more than a decade ago.
The visit is also expected to refocus attention on the cases of three suspected IRA activists being held without charges in Colombia, where they were arrested in August on suspicion of training Marxist rebels. Among them is Niall Connolly, Sinn Fein's Havana-based representative for Latin America.
Adams initially denied that Connolly was a Sinn Fein official, then said Connolly had been appointed to the post without his knowledge.