NO fewer than three separate St Patrick's Day statements have been issued by rival Irish American groups in Congress, two from factions of the Friends of Ireland and one by the Ad Hoc Committee on Irish Affairs. They had in common a call on the IRA to restore the ceasefire.
The split in the Friends, set up 15 years ago, occurred because members in the Senate rejected a statement drafted by their counterparts in the House of Representatives.
A point of contention was the use in the House statement of the phrase "the struggle" to refer to events in Ireland.
But the split had much to do with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. In former years the Speaker of the House was a Democrat and he joined with powerful Democratic senators to pronounce on Irish issues.
The honorary chairman of the Friends is now Republican House Speaker Mr Newt Gingrich, whose interest in Ireland is minimal. He left the drafting to the executive chairman of the Friends, Republican House member Mr James Walsh.
Senator Edward Kennedy's office has always played a major role in crafting the St Patrick's Day statement and it rejected the version from Mr Walsh's office. The senators wanted to recommend the exclusion of Sinn Fein from talks until there was an IRA ceasefire. They wrangled for two days to no avail.
The senators issued their statement as the "Executive Committee" of the "Friends". It was signed by Senators Kennedy, Claiborne Pell, Christopher Dodd and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. They were "outraged", they said, by the end of the IRA ceasefire and the London bombs. "We condemn unequivocally the IRA violence and we call for an immediate restoration of the ceasefire", they said.
The Ad Hoc committee on Irish Affairs, which takes a nationalistic line, said "deplores the recent return to violence by the Irish Republican Army, and urges the IRA to reinstate the ceasefire immediately".
Alone of the three, the Ad Hoc group, chaired by Republicans Ben Gilman and Peter King, and Democrats Tom Manton and Richard Neal, urged the Clinton administration to remain engaged in the peace process. It called for the inter party talks to begin on June 10th without preconditions and on the British government to provide clarifications of provisions of the recent communique of the British and Irish prime ministers.