Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Monday that those behind the renewed violence in Northern Ireland are trying to undermine his party for its support of the peace process.

Adams spoke at the National Press Club ahead of St. Patrick's Day celebrations and meetings with Obama administration officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday.

On Monday, police in Northern Ireland arrested two suspected Irish Republican Army dissidents in addition to nine arrest last week in an investigation into this month's killings of British soldiers and police.

"Sinn Fein itself is as a much a target of the perpetrators as those that they killed," Adams said. He called the attacks "a full frontal assault on the peace process."

Speaking at a news conference with Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin Monday, Clinton also had harsh words for the perpetrators of the attacks, which she called "an affront to the values of everyone community, every ethnicity, every religion and every nation that seeks peace."

Clinton cut off a reporter who referred to opponents of the peace process as dissidents.

"Not dissidents," she said. "I'm all in favor of dissidents, I'm not in favor of criminals."

Adams said that the vast majority of the people in Northern Ireland reject recent violence and support the peace process.

"It's important that we don't minimize what occurred, but we don't exaggerate what occurred," Adams said.

It appears that dissidents are trying to undermine the IRA's 2005 decision to renounce violence and disarm and Sinn Fein's efforts to persuade Catholics to cooperate with the police force - once overwhelmingly Protestant but now more than 25 percent Catholic.

Analysts have said that the dissidents - who have mounted more than 20 gun, bomb and rocket attacks since late 2007 - hoped this month's killings would undermine the current U.S. visit of Northern Irish leaders, including, Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson, the Protestant leader of the power-sharing government. McGuinness, a former IRA commander, is now the senior Irish Catholic in the power-sharing government.

The Northern Ireland leaders twice delayed their trip last week, but are expected to meet President Barack Obama at the White House and congressional leaders on Capitol Hill on St. Patrick's Day, an annual event cherished by Ireland's leaders north and south.

The Associated Press, March 16, 2009