By Debbie McGoldrick

THE year-long U.S. fundraising ban on Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams was lifted last week, and Adams will travel to New York on Wednesday to headline the party’s annual dinner – an event that is expected to gross in excess of $500,000.

Adams was notified last week by the U.S. consul’s office in Belfast that the ban would be lifted. Last year Adams canceled plans to travel to the U.S. during the time the New York dinner was scheduled in protest of the ban, and instead was beamed in via video link to address the hundreds of guests in attendance.

This year’s event, set for Thursday, November 9 at the Sheraton Hotel on Seventh Avenue, is expected to attract more than 700 guests, according to Larry Downes, president of the U.S.-based Friends of Sinn Fein.

“We’re planning on seating more than 700, and we’re on track for selling 1,000 tickets,” Downes told the Irish Voice.

Rita O’Hare, the party’s U.S. representative, said that Sinn Fein is pleased at the reversal by the Bush administration.

“We’re very happy. It was the right thing to do. We don’t think it should have been implemented in the first place,” O’Hare stated.

“I think it came down to the many Irish Americans who contacted the State Department and the National Security Council, who though the ban was unfair.”

O’Hare also singled out Mitchell Reiss, the administration’s envoy on Northern Ire-land, and his support for eliminating the ban. “I know that he made his views strongly known,” she said.

Being permitted to raise money in the U.S. through Friends of Sinn Fein is vitally important for the party, O’Hare said.

“Irish Americans and Sinn Fein share common ground, and through financial support we are able to do our work and drive forward on our main party goal of securing a united Ireland,” she said.

“Sinn Fein doesn’t enjoy the corporate support that other parties enjoy in Ireland,”

she added. “Our ability to raise money here puts us on a par to pursue our goals with the other parties. And by the looks of things we’ll have two elections to contest next year.”

Adams’s latest trip to New York will last less than 48 hours. He will arrive on Wednes-day, November 8 and leave on Thursday, immediately after the dinner, due to commitments back in the North on Friday, when the parties are required to signal their intentions as to whether they will proceed with the St. Andrew’s Agreement, the deal worked out by the Irish and British governments last month on a way to restore devolved government in the North.

O’Hare says that Sinn Fein is ready to move forward. “Obviously we don’t agree with everything, but we are ready to talk. What the Democratic Unionist Party are going to do, I don’t know,” O’Hare stated.

“The big question, is will the DUP continue to refuse to talk to us? Sinn Fein isn’t refusing to meet with anybody. We recognize the DUP and their mandate. But we also demand that our mandate be recognized as well.”