Adams believes all conflicts are preventable as long as there is the will.

Question: Can peace be brokered in Iraq?

Gerry Adams: You see these are all matters of political will. Wars don’t happen by accident any more than poverty happens by accident. They’re all curable. They’re all preventable.

There are big interests being served by these conflicts. So it means standing up to the big interests. That means mobilizing, in many ways, public opinion. It means media playing a crucially important role of highlighting, and informing, and educating people in as objective a way as possible.

But yes, there can be, in any given situation, there can be a just and a proper settlement, which means compromise, which means putting yourself in your opponent's position. And you if you want proof of that, the proof does lie in Ireland to a certain extent. Here we have the impeasement and Mark McGinnis – co-managing equal partners in a power-sharing arrangement.

We used to have the USSR, we used to have a Cold War. There aren’t any certainties once shifts appear.

One of the things I learned, and I believe with great conviction, is that people respond to the political conditions in which they live. So if you want to change how people respond or think, change their conditions. Don’t try to attack their core values. 

You can obviously have your own view of it and you can argue the case. But fundamentalism from whatever position is essentially wrong if it’s in some way used to inflict repression or injustice upon other people. So if you want to change how human beings respond, then change the political conditions in which they live.

Recorded on: Oct 8, 2007