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August 27, 2005

Hyde Wants Extradition of C3

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News about Ireland and the Irish

IT 08/27/05 Henry Hyde Wants Extradition Of Three
BT 08/27/05 DUP Defends Its Stand
BT 08/27/05 Policing Role For Paramilitaries In Spotlight
BT 08/27/05 Blackmen's Parade Is Disrupted
NH 08/27/05 Both Sides Of The Interface
BT 08/27/05 Books: Lynch Returns To His Roots In Clare
IT 08/27/05 Donegal Island Outpost Finally Switched On

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http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2005/0827/728018487HM4COLOMBIA.html

Congressman Wants Extradition Of Three

Sean O'Driscoll in New York

The chairman of the House of Representatives
International Relations Committee has said the Irish
Government should match its willingness to post bail for
the "Colombia Three" with an equal willingness to extradite
the three men back to Colombia.

Congressman Henry Hyde, who chaired a committee hearing on
the three in April 2002, said the Government has "many
reasons and obligations" to extradite the three, including
UN resolutions and Interpol warrants, as well as their own
willingness to post bail for the three men before they
disappeared and re-emerged in Dublin.

Congressman Hyde, chairman of the most powerful foreign
policy committee in the House, said he supported Colombia's
vice-president Francisco Santos, who called on the
Government to honour an international arrest warrant for
Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan. "If it
posted bail for the three, as some media accounts report,
it must work to ensure that these three Irish citizens are
returned to Colombia to face justice, and be held
accountable for their actions in dealing with terrorists in
our hemisphere," said Congressman Hyde.

In April 2004, the Government advanced €17,000 in bail
money to the men on condition that it would later be
repaid. The three fled Colombia while on bail and
reappeared in Ireland earlier this month.

Mr Hyde, a Republican, has long been a critic of the
"Colombia Three" and has accused them of putting American
lives at risk in Colombia.

In April 2002, he chaired a hearing on links between
international terrorist groups and the Colombian rebel
group Farc.

© The Irish Times

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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northwest_edition/story.jsp?story=658812

DUP Defends Its Stand

By Noel McAdam, Political Correspondent
nmcadam@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
27 August 2005

THE DUP has urged anyone with information about attacks on
Catholic families to immediately go to the police.

Under criticism from both the SDLP and Sinn Fein over its
response to the rising wave of loyalist incidents, the main
unionist party insisted its attitude had been unequivocal.

Gregory Campbell said: "There has been a concentration of
attacks in parts of Co Antrim affecting Catholics, as well
as against Protestants in the Fountain in Londonderry and
in north and east Belfast."

"Simple condemnation in itself was insufficient and there
could be no prevarication.

"We have also repeatedly called upon anyone with
information regarding these incidents to provide it to the
Police so that the perpetrators can be brought to justice.

"Severe sentences in the courts, after due process, are the
best deterrent for anyone considering repeating the
actions," the East Londonderry MP added.

His statement, timed to coincide with what is termed the
end of the parading season today, said his party's position
stood in contrast to both Sinn Fein and the SDLP.

"Sinn Fein/IRA have, over 35 years, not only refused to
condemn attacks like these but their military wing carried
them out with their full support. The SDLP, while
condemning sectarian attacks, refrained from supporting the
Police until they obtained political concessions on
policing," he argued.

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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=658816

Policing Role For Paramilitaries In The Spotlight

By Marie Foy
mfoy@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
27 August 2005

THE question of criminals and paramilitaries being allowed
into the PSNI was back in the spotlight today.

The SDLP criticised what it described Sinn Fein's support
for parmilitaries to be allowed to join the police, while
Alliance leader David Ford said there may be "bad apples in
the police" .

Mr Ford told the BBC it was important to focus on the
safeguards that exist to ensure all officers uphold the
law.

"I think we may have to accept there may be certain bad
apples in the police service.

"The key thing is to ensure the police service is run as
best it can be and these bad apples are weeded out."

SDLP justice spokesman Alban Maginness insisted that people
involved in serious crime should not be allowed in the
PSNI.

Mr Maginness commented: "Sinn Fein in negotiations is
pressing again for the criminal records of IRA men to be
erased so that they can join the PSNI.

"This is something that Sinn Fein have been seeking for
years now. It is a reckless, dangerous and self-serving
stance."

The Assemblyman added: "The SDLP has consistently argued
that people who have been involved in serious crime should
not be allowed in the PSNI.

"Sinn Fein's stance would open the doors for loyalist and
republican paramilitaries to join the police."

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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/story.jsp?story=658824

Blackmen's Parade Is Disrupted

Suspect device on route of march

By Ashleigh Wallace
awallace@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
27 August 2005

THE Royal Black Preceptory's District Parade in Armagh was
disrupted this morning following the discovery of a suspect
device on the route.

There were widespread traffic problems in the city after
the device was discovered in Lonsdale Road.

The parade was halted and traffic diversions were put in
place while police examined the scene.

Thousands of members of the Royal Black Institution were on
the march across Ulster today as part of the organisation's
'last Saturday' celebrations.

Loughgall village hosted Blackmen from Co Armagh and east
Tyrone, where upwards of 70 preceptories were expected.

The flag-bedecked village sported a new arch for the
occasion, with this year's demonstration hosted by
Summerisland Royal Black District Chapter No 6.

The sovereign grand master of the Royal Black Institution,
William Logan, was due to address those gathered.

And in Donegal, thousands of Blackmen and their supporters
converged in Raphoe for the first Black Saturday parade to
take place in the Republic. Around 36 preceptories from
across Co Londonderry marched through The Diamond.

Local man, Alex Buchanan, said that Raphoe Royal Black
Preceptory No 258 was honoured to be hosting the 'last
Saturday' parade.

He said: "We're expecting 30 to 40 bands to take part in
the parade and we'll meet in the Royal and Prior school
grounds before parading through the village and up Sparrow
Hill to a field."

Parades are also taking place in Newtownards, Lurgan and
Newtownstewart.

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http://www.nuzhound.com/articles/Irelandclick/arts2005/aug26_both_sides_of_the_interface.php

Both Sides Of The Interface

(Joe Nawaz, Irelandclick.com)

Joe Nawaz visits both sides of the Short Strand interface
following a weekend of violence.

With just a wall physically dividing the residents of Short
Strand and Cluan Place, the weekend's violence – which
culminated in a pipe bomb being found outside a family home
– also demonstrated the equally visible sectarian division
that still exists in the troubled area.

The loyalist mob that congregated in Cluan Place on
Saturday night, apparently inspired by that afternoon's Old
Firm victory for Rangers, launched an orgy of violence,
taking aim at the nationalist homes just yards from where
they were gathered.

For the people of Short Strand, the bombardment of golf
balls and bottles took on a more sinister and potentially
more deadly turn with the lobbing of pipe bombs and even
gun shots being fired from over the peaceline.

Scenes reminiscent of the summer of 2002, when loyalists
effectively laid siege to the nationalist enclave, appear
to have been temporarily averted thanks to frantic
telephone negotiations between community activists on both
sides of the interface.

But with tensions at an all time high, the South Belfast
News took to the streets of the Short Strand and Cluan
Place to find that residents were not optimistic about the
future.

In a rare moment of general consensus, the PSNI united most
people in fury at their alleged inactivity or unwillingness
to act while missiles rained down onto family homes near
the interface.

Sinéad Rooney lives in the shadow of the wall that divides
her Clandeboye Gardens home from loyalist Cluan Place. She
said that tensions had been building up for the past month
in the area and that residents had been bracing themselves
for an escalation.


"For the past three to four weeks, we've been having things
chucked over. Things like golf balls and stones were coming
over maybe two or three times a day so we were expecting
something bigger at some point.

"I was out on Saturday evening and when I came back home,
it was like Beirut. The place was devastated," she said.

"The tension in our area was unbelievable, people were
terrified. I had children and a grandchild in the house and
I am furious that my family's safety is put at risk like
this."

Sinéad also attacked the PSNI's role during the weekend's
trouble.

"Quite simply, they're not doing their job. How can they
sit by and allow our community to be bombarded in this way?
All it would have taken was one jeep in Cluan Place and the
mob would have been dispersed."

Sinéad was unaware that there was, in fact, a PSNI jeep
parked in Cluan Place on the night in question.

Tommy Morrow, a neighbour of Sinéad, came home around
10.30pm to find that "all hell had broke loose".

"There was a crowd around the wall, I could see all the
smashed glass and bottles flying over.

"I know that there was an agreement after phone call
negotiations, for the ones over the wall to stop for about
half an hour. Things went quiet for a bit, then all of a
sudden, we could hear five gun shots from Cluan Place
followed by about 400 bottles all at once – it was raining
glass down all over us. Then they threw a pipe bomb, which
landed in my neighbour's garden."

Mr Morrow said that it took Army Technical Officers up to
four hours to arrive on the scene to deal with the nine-
inch device.

"We were waiting half the night for them to arrive and the
police seemed to do absolutely nothing as well."

Mr Morrow added that residents in Cluan Place were just as
much victims as their Short Strand counterparts.

"I feel for them. They're just ordinary people like us who
want to get on with their lives. They've been intimidated
by loyalist thugs outside their area who take over and use
it to attack us."

Clandeboye Drive resident Peter Walsh mans a telephone
hotline between Short Strand and Cluan Place
representatives. He says that it was vital in preventing an
escalation of the weekend's violence.

"Things began to get a bit sinister over the past couple of
weeks. Instead of the usual golf balls and bottles, we
began to see things like threaded metal bars coming over
the wall. This was obviously pre-meditated stuff and it was
a bit of a worry," said Peter.

"After heavy bombardment on Saturday, we brokered half an
hour's quiet over the phone. This was going well until all
of a sudden a really heavy attack was launched. Tensions
were so high it was just incredible. There was stuff coming
back from this side, but I have to say that it was
retalitory."

Peter maintains that if it were not for the telephone
network the situation would have escalated.

"It's a vital means of communication between our two sides
– they can try and calm their young people down and we can
do the same.

"There's about five or six loyalist factions in East
Belfast and I know that the people on the telephones in
Cluan Place are getting a lot of stick in their own
community about it. But I think that in spite of the
difficulties, it's vitally important to keep the channels
of communication open. We've made a conscious decision to
stay with it."

He added: "For years, we've lived in peaceful co-existence
with our neighbours. People with their own agenda have come
into the area and ruined that. I have every sympathy with
the people in Cluan Place."

In Cluan Place, residents were less comfortable speaking to
the press. Everyone had something to say, but most were not
prepared to go on record. The general feeling in the
austere, flag laden cul-de-sac is that the media were
"unfair" to loyalists.

A woman, with her daughter and grandchildren by her side
said that residents in Cluan Place were left to deal with
the aftermath of the weekend's trouble themselves.

"Nobody came to help us. When it was all over, it was left
to us to come out and clean the place up with our own hands
– it looked like a bomb site.

"We had no choice – our children play on these streets and
we have to clean it up for them.

"It's not fair to keep them indoors because of this. Nobody
mentions that in the news."

Another elderly woman said that she was "sick of people
going on about Short Strand".

"It's not all about them. You should have seen the state of
Cluan Place the day after. It was a disgrace. I know
there's decent people on the other side but when you live
here and have to face bottles and the like being hurled
over it makes you angry to hear about them being 'under
siege'. That's what we've felt for a long time."

One person who was prepared to talk was resident William
Hart, who mans the telephone 'hotline' between Short Strand
and Cluan Place.

"We'd been getting attacked all day," said William. "We saw
kids from the Short Strand attacking cars on the link while
the police stood by and watched."

"This was going on for most of the day and then (UUP MLA)
Michael Copeland turned up and warned us that he had a
'feeling' that something might kick off."

William said that he tried to telephone his counterparts in
the Short Strand when the trouble started to escalate.

"It was useless. Nobody answered all day. I ended up
switching the phone off. What's the point of having this
connection if nobody speaks to you?"

William was also highly critical of police involvement and
accused them of being "obstructive".

"A resident was hit on the head with a bottle when he
jumped on a child to protect it. We called an ambulance for
him but when it came, the police, who were at the top of
the street, refused to let it in.

"That was outrageous. Eventually the ambulance man ignored
the police decision and came through. It leaves you with
little faith in the PSNI."

"I thought that we'd seen the last of this sort of thing
three years ago. That's why me and my family moved back to
Cluan Place. I do know that we're not to blame."

He added: "I heard that the Short Strand ones kicked off
because of the result in the Old Firm match. Perhaps
they're just sore losers, but it's no reason to commit
violence."

August 27, 2005
________________

Geraldine Rice is the Alliance Party Spokesperson on
Health, Social Services & Personal Safety.

**********************************

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=658783

Books: Lynch Returns To His Roots In Clare

BOOKING PASSAGE: WE IRISH & AMERICANS by Thomas Lynch,
Jonathan Cape £12.99

By Damian Smyth
featureseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
27 August 2005

FREQUENTLY, prose by poets is overwritten, straining for
effect, stuffed with unusual imagery, heavy on mood and
emotion, light on detail and fact. Let it be known that
this is not the case with this wonderful book.

Thomas Lynch already enjoys a reputation as one of the
foremost of contemporary poets, but anyone expecting a
gushing lyrical evocation of Irish-Americanism as we have
come to know it over the last few decades will - thankfully
- be disappointed.

Lynch's Irish roots are firm and deep. In 1970, at the age
of 21, he returned to Moveen, in west Clare, to the
thatched cottage of his great-grandfather, also Thomas
Lynch, who had emigrated to the US in 1890. There he found
elderly, unmarried cousins who made him welcome.

Many sojourns followed and Lynch's memoir recounts the
powerful impact of parochial detail on the mindset of a
very modern, sophisticated and urbane American citizen.
Among those details is the strenuous struggle conducted by
the cousins against the predatory Land Commission under
whose auspices the farm had been originally sold to the
Lynches. Under its terms, "the rights of two honourable,
elderly citizens to retain or dispose of the land that had
occupied their lives and times and those of their parents
and their parents' parents were lost".

Lynch's own diagnosis of a decision "made by a nameless
Dublin clerk at the instruction, no doubt, of somebody who
knew somebody who somebody who knew somebody else" weaves
one of the important threads in the narrative -
frustration, exhaustion, isolation, determination and great
dignity.

Interwoven with the sagas of rooted but unsettled Irish
rural life - the lives of those who did not leave - is
Lynch's own childhood and immediate family history in
Detroit. His father returns from fighting the Japanese to
enrol in Mortuary School, founding a dynasty of undertakers
male and female, which currently operates six mortuaries in
Motor City, "serving now more than a thousand families a
year".

And it is against a backdrop of iconic Hollywood depictions
of Irish-American Catholicism - Angels with Dirty Faces,
Boys Town, Going My Way and The Bells of St Mary's - that
Lynch records the explosion of grim reality deep in the
heart of Catholic Ireland, the Mother Ship itself: "The
picture on the front page of the Clare Champion for the
Ides of March 2002 seems a throwback to the former age ?
But the headline this week reads CLARE BISHOP IN US SEX
SCANDAL."

The over-riding note of Lynch's temperament is,
unsurprisingly perhaps, death, both physical and spiritual.
There is no fuller, more enigmatic or more chilling source
for such meditations than the matter-of-fact reportage
found in the weekly newspapers of Ireland and Lynch makes
productive use of these organs to bring the past and
present into immediate commerce with each other. The deaths
of Tommy and Nora Lynch are joined by a multitude of
people, the famous lying down with what we are forced to
call the 'ordinary' ? that's folk like you and me whose
lives most often go unrecorded and, if we are fortunate,
unreported as well.

Paradoxically, this does not make for a downbeat book.
Rather, it is affirmative, challenging and, above all,
charming in the elemental sense of wounds being healed over
distance.

Though tragic drownings reported in the Clare Journal in
1888 are mirrored by contemporary accounts of similar
mishaps in the Irish Times of December 2000, Lynch's
professional eye - both as a professional and a poet - is
drawn more to yet another Clare Champion headline declaring
bizarrely MISSING MAN FOUND DEAD IN PUB TOILET.

How a man can be considered 'missing' - for three days, as
it happens - and be discovered in a well-frequented
hostelry is a mystery you must and should unravel
yourselves.

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http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2005/0827/1441728354HM2ISLAND.html

Donegal Island Outpost Finally Switched On

Tim O'Brien

One of the last outposts to be left untouched by rural
electrification, Gabhala, or Gola island off the coast of
Donegal, was connected to the ESB national grid yesterday.

However, despite its familiarity to generations of Irish
college students, the island no longer has permanent
residents - the last to leave did so in the 1970s.

No one now lives on the island between November and
February.

During the remainder of the year, the part-time population
inhabits fewer than 30 houses.

However, there is a very active co-op on Gabhala which
lobbied the Department of Community and Rural affairs to
provide 80 per cent of the €350,000 cost of yesterday's
connection to the mainland. The remaining 20 per cent was
paid by the ESB.

In a ceremony conducted by Minister for Agriculture Mary
Coughlan on the island yesterday afternoon, six houses were
connected to the ESB national grid

Eóin Ó Neachtáin of the ESB said another 20 applications
had been received from locals, and their homes would be
connected within weeks.

The island, a 10-minute ferry ride from the Donegal coast
near Bunbeg, was connected via a 2km undersea cable.

Residents are hoping the benefits of a reliable electricity
system will make it possible to stay beyond the usual
November exodus and perhaps even encourage some people to
return full time. "People are hoping the connection will
breathe new life into the island community," said Mr Ó
Neachtaín. "It is the last of the larger islands to be
connected with the exception of Tory Island which is much,
much further out and relies on an ESB generator on the
island."

© The Irish Times

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