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GERRY ADAMS

A writer and political leader, Adams was born in the Roman Catholic ghetto of West Belfast. His father was a day laborer and member of the Irish Republican Army who was shot and imprisoned by the British. His mother came from a family of prominent Irish revolutionaries and nationalists.

While a teenager, Adams worked for a time as a bartender, but eventually joined Sinn Fein and focused his efforts on housing, civil rights and unemployment.

He also joined a self-defense team to protect Catholic demonstrators from Protestant paramilitaries, and spent much of the '70s either on the run or in jail. He was held without trial from 1973 to 1977. In 1984 he was severely wounded by three unionist gunmen in a daylight shooting on a Belfast street.

Adams was chosen as Sinn Fein's vice-president in 1978 and its president five years later. He became a member of the House of Commons in 1982, but never took his seat because he refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the Crown of England.

As the principal architect of Sinn Fein's tilt toward peace, he has written "Scenario for Peace" and "Towards a Lasting Peace in Ireland" along with a number of other books. He also participated in secret talks with the Ulster Catholic party that eventually involved British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds.

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