Free Republic

There will be no St Patrick's Day celebrations at the White House for Sinn Fein - or any of the North's other parties. President Bush has decided to bar the republicans because they have been linked to the Northern Bank robbery and other IRA crime. But he has listened to appeals that Sinn Fein should not be singled out for exclusion and the ban will now also apply to all the North's political parties, including the SDLP, the DUP and the Ulster Unionists. It will be the first time in more than a decade that Sinn Fein and the main...

Masked Gunmen Raid Train Armed and masked robbers held up a train today, removing a container of cigarettes using a crane, Gardaí said. The robbery happened at a disused rail station in Dunleer, Co Louth.The freight train, carrying a variety of goods from Dundalk to Dublin's North Wall was forced to stop when it encountered the crane on the railway line, a spokesman for Irish Rail confirmed. One of the gang boarded the driver's carriage and held the driver and guard at gunpoint while accomplices removed the container of cigarettes from one of the wagons. Once the haul - described ...

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9.00 p.m. The Irish and British governments have made a declaration in Belfast which is hoped will provide the basis for an agreement, and will lead to the setting up of the Northern Executive. If the deal is agreed by both sides, mechanisms are to be triggered to set up the power-sharing executive in the new Northern Ireland assembly on July 15, the British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair said. Under the deal decommissioning would follow days after the setting up of the Executive. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Mr Blair said: "We believe both unionist and nationalist opinion will ...