Adams warns of 'crisis'

Mr Adams wants "full disclosure"

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has accused the British intelligence services of trying to defeat republicans.

Speaking at a Hunger Strike commemoration in the Ulster Hall in Belfast on Thursday, Mr Adams said the peace process was in profound crisis.

He made no specific reference to the Stakeknife controversy, but strongly criticised the media for naming a man alleged to have been an army agent in the IRA.

The Sinn Fein president said journalists had been conned by an "avalanche of spin" from "securocrats".

He said it was time the spotlight was turned on the authorities in London.

West Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci, 57, strenuously denies allegations that he was an Army informer inside the IRA with the code name Stakeknife.

Mr Adams said: "The British Government needs to be brought to the point of publicly disclosing what they have been doing in our country for the past 30 years, and of publicly outlining the methods, the techniques, and the lengths that they have gone to, to try to suppress us.

Mr Scappaticci denies spying on IRA

"There should be full disclosure of the strategies and activities of Britain's secret agencies."

The political process in Northern Ireland has been deadlocked over demands on the IRA to spell out clearly an end to all paramilitary activity.

Mr Adams said a political solution was "being opposed now by those within the British system who want to cover up the practice of illegal and criminal behaviour including the killing of citizens".

He said the media had unquestioningly taken "a line from faceless people who have given us killings on Bloody Sunday in Derry, on the New Lodge Road in Belfast, actively manipulated and armed and directed unionist paramilitaries over the decades to kill republicans, to kill nationalists".