Gerry Adams has been frozen out by the Washington political establishment on his trip to the US this week.

The Sinn Fein president has been barred from talks with Democrat senator Edward Kennedy, normally one of America's biggest Irish republican sympathisers.

Kennedy slammed the IRA's "ongoing criminal activity and contempt for the rule of law" as the reason for the snub.

Adams has also been denied his traditional St Patrick's Day audience with the president at the White House.