Northern nationalists are being "stampeded" into voting Yes for the Belfast Agreement in tomorrow's referendum, claims the president of Republican Sinn Fein, Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh.
Calling for a No vote at a press conference in Dublin yesterday, he said there must be no return to a new Stormont, "this time strengthened and updated by nationalist participation and full recognition of partition by the Dublin administration".
"History will record the efforts of those who oppose the stampede of a people under threat of force in what is not a free vote in two geographical fragments in Ireland", he added.
According to Mr O Bradaigh, while the proposed assembly would in no way replicate the old Stormont arrangement, it would be a power-base in Belfast and "a basis for patronage in which everyone in the executive will participate . . . a self-perpetuating barrier government between the Irish people and the British". Sinn Fein would become absorbed into the system - the same as the other parties down the decades who had left the republican movement, he said.
"They will become totally constitutional and reformist, which is of course a point of view. It is the view of the SDLP. I would not take exception to that. That is what they stand for. But I think the people who occupy that position should not be calling themselves Sinn Fein and should not be calling themselves republicans", he said.
Sinn Fein had "only two further steps to take . . . to go into the house of the enemy (the House of Commons) and to engage in repression of their former comrades who may continue the struggle".
If the Belfast Agreement represented an end to the conflict, prisoners would be released, policing would be settled and decommissioning would not be such a big question, Mr O Bradaigh added.
"I do not think that the majority of people want prisoners to remain in (prison) on the basis of retribution. From their particular viewpoints, they are more worried about them (prisoners) resuming activities", he said.
Republican Sinn Fein is also pressing for a No vote in the referendum to endorse the Amsterdam Treaty.