Republican Sinn Fein is to launch a campaign to boycott the Assembly election. The party's vice-president, Ms Mary Ward, told the annual Wolfe Tone commemoration at Bodenstown, Co Kildare, that the "new Stormont" will be a self-perpetuating power bloc.
She called for republicans not to strengthen the Assembly by voting on June 25th. The campaign will be launched officially tomorrow.
Ms Ward said an entirely artificial means had been devised to administer, under British rule, an artificial area carved out of Ireland. "It cannot endure, no more than did the Sunningdale agreement nor the original Stormont."
Giving the oration at the graveside, she said the Sinn Fein leadership already had set their minds on becoming "some sort of Northern Fianna Fail party".
She said Mr Gerry Adams said he was on the road to the Republic for which he once fought. Mr David Trimble asserted that the Union was safe. "Both men cannot be right," she said. "At least in the past when former comrades, who used to assemble here with us in Bodenstown, changed their tactics or even their aims, they had the honesty to admit that," she said.
The party president, Mr an Ruairi O Bradaigh, speaking to The Irish Times, said there were no plans for joint campaigns with the 32County Sovereignty Committee. When asked if there was any significance in the fact that there was no mention of the armed struggle in his speech or in the oration, he said nothing should be read into that "one way or another".