Sinn Féin pleaded with Blair to think again on Iraq war

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Wednesday March 14, 2007 12:21 by Guardianista

McGuinness told Blair what to expect

Sinn Féin have always been prepared to meet with anyone, and discuss anything.

The party has been excluded and silenced for so long in its history that there have been very few occasions when it has seemed correct to refuse to speak to someone, however much the people concerned might be considered unpopular or wrong.

On the issue of the invasion of Iraq, Sinn Féin has often been critiscised for even speaking to Bush and Blair while the war was ongoing.

This article from the Guardian might restore some people's faith that the party's representatives were not giving the British and Americans an easy time of it during these meetings.

Not that it did much good of course.

But better to try and fail, perhaps, than refuse to engage at all...

Leafleet dropped on Southern Iraq by British Royal Air Force

Sinn Féin's plea to think again on eve of Iraq war

Owen Bowcott and Nicholas Watt
Tuesday March 13, 2007
The Guardian

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness pleaded with Tony Blair on the eve of the Iraq war to learn the lessons of Ireland. "We said, you know we are only a small party from Ireland and obviously we do think you have made an important contribution to the situation in Ireland," Mr McGuinness told the Guardian.

"But ... if you go into Iraq it will be another Vietnam and it will be a huge mistake. That's it. It is sad, it is tragic."

One of the prime minister's officials told the Sinn Féin leaders that Iraq would be sorted out in months.

Mr McGuinness added: "I said to him, I said to the people who were there with him, you are living in cloud cuckoo land ... given the previous history of successive British military expeditions to Ireland, that certainly would not be my view of how the situation in Iraq is going to move in the next short while."

Mr McGuinness said he could not understand how the prime minister could have been so gung ho in Iraq while showing such sensitivity towards Ireland:

"Tony Blair and Iraq is almost like a total contradiction of Tony Blair and Ireland."