The president of Republican Sinn Fein, Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh, has said continuing republican opposition to British rule in the North has contributed to the crisis for the Belfast Agreement. Speaking at his party's ardfheis in Dublin yesterday, he said pressure from republican grassroots had prevented the Sinn Fein leadership from compromising even further on decommissioning. "Without it, the Provos would have gone further and sold out even more."
Around 150 delegates attended the conference, and there was a heavy Special Branch presence outside.
Mr O Bradaigh said the Provisional IRA's opening of arms dumps to international inspectors who reported to the British government was "stigmatised in IRA general orders as `an act of treachery' for which the penalty is `death' ".
It was hypocritical that those who had shot people in the past for exposing dumps were now doing the very same thing themselves. The Belfast Agreement would continue to be beset by crises because it was "built on sand rather than rock".
Republican Sinn Fein would be discussing contesting next year's Westminster elections in the North, he said. If it decided to run, it would be the first time since it broke away from Sinn Fein in 1986.
Mr O Bradaigh dismissed moves to reform the RUC by changing its name, badge, structures or religious make-up. "Regardless of the outcome of such proceedings, what we will have is a force, recruited, trained and motivated, armed and paid by the British government.
"As such, it will be a British police force here, and no young Irish person who gives his or her allegiance to Ireland should have anything to do with it," he said.
When asked what Republican Sinn Fein's position would be on future attacks on the new police force, a party ardchomhairle member, Ms Mary Ward, said: "We regret any loss of life, but while there is a British presence in Ireland, there will always be people who oppose it."
Referring to a dissident republican attack on an RUC station in Co Tyrone in July, Mr O Bradaigh said it had been a "strange spectacle" to see British "Crown Minister Martin McGuinness being driven to Stewartstown in his Stormont ministerial car to be pictured on television condemning an attack on the local British forces barracks".
He accused the Provisionals of "wilfully and in cold blood" assassinating a "Real IRA" member, Mr Joe O'Connor, in west Belfast last month. The political establishment was guilty of double standards for not speaking out against it, he said.
"I refer to the SDLP, the British government, the churches, the Dublin administration and its opposition. It would appear that any action against life or property by those who support the new Stormont is excused while those who oppose continued English rule here are to be condemned and vilified at every opportunity."
Ms Geraldine Taylor, from west Belfast, accused the Provisional IRA of denying freedom of speech in the city. "They campaigned against Section 31 and they are now doing the same, and worse, themselves.
"It is a reign of terror against their own people. They are intimidating their own former members and prisoners from speaking out. Their grip on these areas must be broken," she said.
Mr Joe O'Neill, from Donegal, said Continuity IRA prisoners on both sides of the Border were being denied political status. He called on Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein to speak out in support of the inmates. Both men were former political prisoners themselves and, if they remained silent on the issue, people would believe they supported this "vindictive treatment".
Mr John McDonagh, from the Irish Freedom Committee in New York, also addressed the conference. He told delegates support for dissident prisoners was growing in the US.