US clears way for Adams' fund-raising

Gerry Adams has the go ahead to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for Sinn Fein in the United States after being granted a visa last night.

The visa application was made in Dublin three days ago and approved by the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, in the wake of the latest IRA ceasefire.

Jamie Rubin, a State Department spokesman, said there were no restrictions on the new visa, leaving Mr Adams free to raise funds while he is there.

"With regard to the restrictions on fund-raising, which is usually the question, there are none," Mr Rubin said.

!t will be the Sinn Fein president's first visit to the US since before the previous IRA ceasefire ended in February 1996.

This time there will be no return visit to the White House. President Bill Clinton was outraged when the ceasefire ended just days after he gave Mr Adams a public endorsement with the granting of a meeting. But Mr Adams is expected to have meetings with senior members of the administration.

Sinn Fein last night welcomed the announcement and said the trip would go ahead between 2 and 8 September.

After leaving Washington, the party will travel to New York to attend a gala fund-raising dinner at which supporters will pay $500 (pounds 315) a head to sit down with the republican leadership.

The team will then split up, with Mr Adams heading for Massachusetts, chief negotiator Martin McGuinness for San Francisco and Caoimhghin O Caolain, Sinn Fein's recently elected member of the Irish Parliament, for Chicago for meetings and fund-raising events.

A Sinn Fein spokesman welcomed the granting of the visas but said: "We have never doubted the commitment of the US administration to the peace process and never had any doubt these waivers would be granted."

Because of what US officials called Mr Adams's "past involvement in terrorist activities" he is ineligible for a visa unless the administration gives him a special waiver.

The Sinn Fein party will return to Belfast in time for the start of the multi-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland at which they are due to make their first appearance.

Ken Maginnis, security spokesman for the Ulster Unionist Party, said he believed the US authorities' visa decision was "premature".

But he was not surprised by it, he said, as Mo Mowlam, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, had gone back on her commitment to judge Sinn Fein's entry to the talks on their words and deeds and the continuation of the IRA ceasefire.

He said despite Sinn Fein's rejection of the principle of consent, an assembly in Ulster and decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, they were still going to get to the talks.

"I think that I am coming round to the belief that democracy is an ass," he said.