DUBLIN, Ireland?Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Tuesday he won’t attend a U.S. congressional hearing to discuss the Irish Republican Army’s alleged training of Colombian rebels.

Adams, who travels regularly to the United States to raise funds for his IRA-linked party, was invited last month to a Congressional hearing. He will explain to Congress, at a scheduled Wednesday hearing, why one of his party’s representatives was among three IRA suspects arrested last August in Colombia.

The U.S.-backed government there has accused the trio of training left-wing guerrillas in the manufacture of mortars and car bombs, which are being used with increasingly devastating effect in Colombia’s 38-year-old civil war.

Adams said Tuesday that the IRA had denied all involvement in Colombia. He argued that to attend the hearing would be insensitive to the three suspects detained in Columbia and could infringe their rights to a fair trial.