THE Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, called on the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major, to announce an early general election as "a Christmas present" to the people of Northern Ireland.
At the launch of a new Sinn Fein bulletin yesterday on the position of republican prisoners in Ireland and abroad, Mr Adams, said his party would continue to seek ways of moving the situation forward.
Asserting that Mr Major "obviously has not the courage or the vision to create a credible process of negotiations", Mr Adams said that having failed to deliver meaningful talks, "the second-best Christmas present he could give the people of Northern Ireland would be a British general election."
The Sinn Fein leader also said that there would not be any peace settlement unless the prisoners were part of it, "and any peace settlement has to include a healing process which means the release of all the political prisoners."
Mr Adams said they were asking Mr Major only "to stick by what he said both in legislation and in his announcement of elections, when he said there would be automatic and direct entry to talks."
He welcomed President Clinton's remarks at his meeting with the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, this week. "He made it clear that an inclusive process is what is required, and he made it clear that Sinn Fein should be involved in talks, " said Mr Adams.
At yesterday's press conference Mr Adams was accompanied by relatives of republican prisoners. They detailed the effects on their families of the rigid British security measures applied to republican prisoners.
Mr Adams asserted that Irish prisoners in Britain were being treated punitively, "in a way that is aimed at breaking them". Conditions for those prisoners had actually worsened throughout the period of the IRA ceasefire he claimed. The prisoners and their families were being treated as hostages, he said.
Among the complaints of the relatives was the "closed visit" system now being applied, which involves a perspex or glass screen between the prisoner and his relatives, with conversation being conducted by telephone.
Mrs Maria Magee, wife of Paul "Dingus" Magee, said that she had not seen her husband since August 1994, because he refused to accept the regime of strip searching and internal searching imposed for visits.
Mrs Francine Martin, whose husband Pat is on remand in Belmarsh prison, said she had had one visit with her husband since his arrest earlier this year. This was conducted under the "closed visiting" restrictions
Mr Adams said that the prisoners issue was one on which the British government could have moved in a progressive way, even in terms of improving the conditions for the relatives of the prisoners, but it had failed to do so.
The information bulletin launched yesterday noted that 374 "Irish political prisoners" are currently held in jails in Ireland, Britain and the US. Of these, 73 are serving life sentences, four are serving 40-year fixed sentences and 80 are serving sentences of 20 years or over.
Thirteen prisoners are held in solitary confinement in "special security units" in Belmarsh and Full Sutton prisons in England and five have been in solitary confinement for almost two years, the bulletin claimed. They were denied compassionate parole, and relatives who made the arduous journey for visits were often harassed or found that the prisoner had been suddenly transferred elsewhere.