     IRISH NEWS ROUND-UP
     Friday, 30 January, 1998



2.   Loyalist statement 'untrustworthy'
3.   British soldier fired brick at youth
4.   Australian Labour support Adams visa bid

     
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>>>> Loyalist statement 'untrustworthy'
     
     Sinn Fein has urged nationalists in the north if
     Ireland to remain vigilant after a promise by the
     Loyalist Volunteer Force that it would no longer target
     "innocent Catholics".  The statement was being treated
     with scepticism, not least because loyalists who have
     spoken for the splinter group denying there had been
     any change in tactics.
     
     Councillor Alex Maskey said the LVF were
     "untrustworthy" after the loyalist group said that from
     11.55pm last night attacks against the general Catholic
     community would cease.
     
     But the Loyalist Volunteer Force vowed to
     keep up attacks on republicans and in the 26 Counties
     until the south dropped its territorial claim over the
     north.
     
     In the past year, the LVF have claimed responsibility
     for killing ten Catholics at random, often with the
     open assistance of other loyalist groups.  On December
     27, the Republican INLA killed the LVF leader Billy
     Wright in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh prison.
     

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>>>> British soldier fired brick at youth
     
     18 year old Lurgan youth Brendan McCartan received six
     stitches in a head wound after being hit by a brick
     thrown by a British soldier from the top of a
     landrover.
     
     The incident happened in the early hours of Saturday
     morning 17 January as the youth assisted a young woman
     who fell and hurt herself as she left a pub after a
     night out.
     
     McCartan and some friends were assisting the young
     woman and had phoned an ambulance, but as they waited a
     British army patrol passed.
     
     Other young people leaving the pub shouted at the
     British patrol of four jeeps, which turned further down
     the road. As the patrol returned the young people threw
     stones at the jeeps and the troops in them threw
     bottles in response.
     
     It was as the patrol drove past Brendan that a British
     soldier stood up at the hatch and aimed a stone at the
     group around the injured woman and struck McCartan on
     the head.
     
     McCartan has made a complaint to his solicitor.
     
     
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>>>> Australian Labour support Adams visa bid
     
     THE Australian Labour Party has passed a resolution
     calling on the conservative government to allow West
     Belfast MP Gerry Adams to visit Australia. The call was
     made in recognition of the role that Adams and Sinn
     Fein have played in the search for a lasting
     settlement. The resolution also stressed the need for
     active international support for the talks process and
     the need for justice and international investment to
     promote economic and social advance in the Six
     Counties.
     
     The resolution, passed at last week's annual national
     conference in Hobart comes as the result of continual
     lobbying from Australian Aid for Ireland (AIA) and some
     50 Australian Labour MPs and senators who opposed the
     decision of Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock.
     
     This important move comes against the backdrop of the
     ongoing legal battle to force the Australian Security
     Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to release the
     documents on which the decision to deny Adams a visa
     was based. Michael Morgan of AIA said, "we believe that
     the actions of Prime Minister John Howard and his
     Foreign Affairs Minister Alex Downar are simply
     anti-republican and are made at the behest of the
     British government".
     
     Downar is the brother-in-law of Patrick O'Neill, son of
     Terence O'Neill, former Prime Minister of the Six
     Counties.
