Sinn Fein leader may cancel US trip

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams will cancel a trip to the United States next week if the State Department forbids him from attending a fund-raising dinner for the party in New York, Sinn Fein officials said yesterday. They also contended that the Bush administration was not giving them enough credit for getting the Irish Republican Army to end its armed campaign and give up its weapons.

After the IRA, which is allied with Sinn Fein, was accused in a $50 million bank heist in Belfast last December, the State Department said Sinn Fein officials would be allowed to enter the United States but could not participate in fund-raising. A Bush administration official said yesterday that the restriction could be lifted if Adams or his party ''make some positive noises" in support of the overhauled police force in Northern Ireland, which Sinn Fein has refused to endorse.

The official declined to elaborate, but said the White House has not given Adams or Sinn Fein a list of preconditions.

''All he has to do is say something positive" about policing, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ''The bar isn't 10 feet tall."

Sinn Fein officials, including Adams, who denies ever belonging to the IRA, and Sinn Fein's chief negotiator Martin McGuinness, who acknowledges his IRA past, have been allowed to enter the United States in the past year. But the Bush administration's resolve to restrict Sinn Fein officials from fund-raising grew stronger after the slaying on Jan. 30 of a Belfast man, Robert McCartney, allegedly by IRA members.

Sinn Fein officials assumed the restrictions would be lifted after the IRA announced in July that it was ending its 35-year armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland, and last month's announcement by international monitors that the IRA had destroyed its hidden arsenal.

But now Sinn Fein officials contend that the US government is using the fund-raising restrictions to wring more concessions, specifically getting Adams and Sinn Fein to voice support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Alone among the major parties, Sinn Fein has refused to endorse the police force, join the civilian board that oversees it, or encourage republican constituents to become police officers.

The chances of Sinn Fein saying anything positive about policing seemed to dim this week after five men, including several well-known republicans, were arrested as part of the investigation into the bank robbery. One of the men is a reputed member of the IRA's ruling Army Council, according to law enforcement sources. Sinn Fein has denounced the arrests as politically motivated.

Last month, a group of seven congressmen, including US Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Springfield, called on the State Department to lift the fund-raising restriction. Yesterday, in response to a Globe inquiry, US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he thought the restriction should be lifted.

Kennedy, who was instrumental in persuading President Clinton to allow Adams to visit the United States for the first time in 1994, eight months before the IRA called a cease-fire, refused to meet with Adams last March, saying the IRA had become ''an albatross" around Sinn Fein's neck. But in offering his first olive branch to Sinn Fein since his public split with Adams, Kennedy said the party's role in bringing about the end of the IRA's campaign should be rewarded.

''I agree that Sinn Fein should support the new police service in Northern Ireland. There should be no question about that," Kennedy said. ''However, Sinn Fein has recently made impressive progress toward lasting peace by securing the final act of decommissioning by the IRA. It would be a mistake for the administration at this important time to impose this kind of restriction."

State Department officials indicated they will not lift the restrictions unless Adams or Sinn Fein make a gesture about policing. Edgar Vasquez, a spokesman for the State Department, said, ''It is our hope that Gerry Adams will travel to the US in support of the peace process."

Asked what Sinn Fein has to do to get the restriction lifted, Vasquez said: ''They know exactly what needs to be done. What that is, I'm not at liberty to say."

In a statement, McGuinness said Adams would not come to the United States if the restrictions remain in place. He also said Sinn Fein would resist any attempt to link the party's endorsement of the police force to the visa issue.

''Any heavy-handed attempt by the State Department to try and dictate Sinn Fein policy on policing is misguided and will do nothing to help in the resolution of this key issue," McGuinness said.

In an interview yesterday during a visit to Boston, Ireland's foreign minister, Dermot Ahern, said lifting the fund-raising restriction was ''a matter for the US government." He said the Irish government had not asked the United States to maintain the restrictions, nor would it intervene on Adams's behalf, as it has in the past.

Adams was supposed to pick up his visa in Dublin on Monday, travel to the United States on Tuesday, and attend a gala dinner at a Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan Thursday night. The annual New York dinner run by Friends of Sinn Fein, the American-based support group, is the party's single-biggest fund-raiser, usually netting about $400,000. This year's event, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Sinn Fein, was expected to raise even more.