Adams visit is 'irrevocably damaging'
THE US Administration regards Gerry Adams's visit to Cuba as even more disturbing than the arrest of the IRA suspects in Colombia, the Sunday Independent has learned. Senior diplomatic sources describe the trip as "irrevocably damaging" to Sinn Féin's standing in Washington.

As the CIA prepares to testify to a US congressional committee investigating links between Sinn Féin/IRA and Farc terrorists in Colombia, leading Irish-American politicians hitherto sympathetic to the republican movement are baffled by Mr Adams's miscalculation of the Bush Administration's particular sensitivities in relation to Cuba.

Bush's brother Jeb is seeking re-election as Governor of Florida and is depending on a huge anti-Castro vote in the state. Florida was crucial to the President's election.

Meanwhile, it is alleged that in the years since the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA has developed ever closer links with Colombian terrorists intent on overthrowing the American-backed government. Farc is regarded as one of the greatest terrorist threats to US interests in the Western hemisphere.

Washington has increased military aid to the Colombian government under a $1.3bn economic assistance plan.

It is claimed that more than 30 high-ranking IRA operatives or Sinn Féin activists have visited Farc-controlled areas in the last four years.

These and other allegations are being examined by the House Committee on International Relations as leaked reports claim it is vetting new information uncovered during a recent trip to Cuba.

Among the Congressmen who visited Havana was Democratic representative Bill Delahunt. Last week, he said the new evidence needed to be vetted, analysed and corroborated. In an interview with the Sunday Independent, Mr Delahunt said the visit of Mr Adams created a problem because of the hostile relationship between the White House and Cuba though this hostility "did not reflect the views of the vast majority of Congress".

The US government cautioned in September that an Adams trip to Cuba would raise "troubling questions" if it turned out the IRA had links to the Farc "terrorist" group.

Meanwhile, a senior aide to the House Committee on International Relations said last week that it may make the highly unusual move of requesting the CIA to testify at the hearing.

Cuba is also said to have developed ties with Farc, which is alleged to send its wounded to Havana for treatment.

Sinn Féin's representative in Cuba, Niall Connolly, one of three men still being held by Colombian authorities, helped organise Mr Adams's trip to Cuba, where he had a five-hour meeting with Fidel Castro.

Last week, it emerged that Irish National Congress president Fr Seán McManus had appealed to the House Committee on International Relations not to schedule hearings about links between the IRA and Farc because it would "harm the Irish peaceprocess".

In a separate letter to Delahunt, Fr McManus said the congressional hearing would "inevitably be seen as an attempt to embarrass Sinn Féin". That plea to stop the hearing failed because the arrest of Niall Connolly and convicted IRA men James Monaghan and Martin McCauley is now the subject of judicial proceedings in Colombia.

"We have to find out what links, if any, there are," Mr Delahunt told the Sunday Independent. He confirmed that he will visit Colombia, probably in March, on a fact-finding mission in preparation for the congressional hearing due later in the spring.

The chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Congressman Henry Hyde, has told Irish-American groups seeking to end the investigation that the inquiry must continue because it is in America's national security interests.

"We must know what choice the IRA and Sinn Féin have made concerning support for global terrorism," he wrote in a letter to the Irish National Congress. "Embarrassment is not of concern to Congress in conducting an inquiry that involves protecting our national interests."

He cites US President George Bush's post-September 11 dictum that "those who are not with us are against us" in the war against terrorism.

The chairman of the lobby group Irish American Republicans, J Brian McCarthy, said: "Fidel Castro is a walking human rights violator. We have supported Gerry Adams in the past and we will continue to support his efforts for peace and justice in the North, but we will not allow him to go to Cuba and embrace a tyrant without comment."

- JEROME REILLY