IRA to announce dissarmament

[Cookie]

I've heard news that the IRA are to announce that they have decommissioned all their weapons. At a news conference tomorrow the head of the decommissioning group General John deChastilane is to announce this and that two independant observers from the Catholic and Unionist side are to confirm this also. What do people think? For me it's a great day and hopefully unionists will over time acknowledge the enormous momentous occasion this is and begin to sit down with Sinn Fein to discuss the Norths sectarian violence free future.

[Starcom826]

My understanding is that the IRA has become a lot less radical because the militant radicals have splintered from it. People from UK feel free to clarify.

[Cookie]

yes a break away group calling themselves then Real IRA was formed by militant members but they are few in numbers and ability to function has been limited by the two governments (british and irish) ad by the IRA themselves. The majority of republicans would be in vast favour of a lastable peace through dialogue and without violence and more importantly minus the gun.

[Powa]

Yeah, I've heard this one a few times before. They will never disarm completely, the are a paramilitary group, and always will be. Once it kicks off again all these "dissarmed" weapons will be somehow firing bullets.

[Cookie]

No this really is different. It will be independantly verified. Both governments security agencies will also make comments in the coming days to the effect that they too also agree that the IRA have disarmed completely. Of course it's possible if the troubles started up again that they could buy weapons but we have to remain positive that this wont happen. That there is now a real chance for peace and power sharing in the north. I dont think that todays news can be just dissmissed as another ploy by the IRA. This really is big news. Keep an eye out on news websites. I'll post back here during the day with info on the press conference re the announcement.

[Starcom826]

No this really is different. It will be independantly verified. Both governments security agencies will also make comments in the coming days to the effect that they too also agree that the IRA have disarmed completely. Of course it's possible if the troubles started up again that they could buy weapons but we have to remain positive that this wont happen. That there is now a real chance for peace and power sharing in the north. I dont think that todays news can be just dissmissed as another ploy by the IRA. This really is big news. Keep an eye out on news websites. I'll post back here during the day with info on the press conference re the announcement.

586580359[/snapback]

Hey if it all works out, no complaints here.

[raid517]

I think the real danger comes now from the loyalist community rather from the nationalist one - because the nationalists feel that too many concessions have been made to the Catholics in order to get them to this point, whereas the Protestants haven't really gained anything very much.

I think the thing that is likely to cause the worst problems is if they don't find a away to compromise on the loyalist marches - where they like to demonstrate their hatred of the Catholics, by marching through and playing offensive sectarian songs in predominantly Catholic neighbourhoods.

You are not going to stop them from wanting to do it - as they claim it is their 'right' in a democratic society to walk and protest in any way they want - and they have been doing this for hundreds of years.

But if anywhere, this is where this thing is most likely to fall apart.

GJ

[Cookie]

I agree raid517 on both your points. The catholics have gained alot from concessions but one issue is that the unionists are more divided in terms of leadership than the republicans. The marches will need to be negotiated and perhaps as well as the orange order giving up some of its more contentious marches the republicans might have to agree to some of marches withij their communities. This will be very messy to sort out but what the unionists need is reassurances that the north is not just going to be handed back to the republic...which I dont think it will and which the catholics in the north probably realise will not happen for a very long time if ever. Now what seems to be needed is that devolved government be handed back to the northern parties and see how both catholics and protestants handle power sharing again.

[h00nta]

It's been announced.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4281104.stm

It's a step in the right direction, unfortunately in itself it won't stop the beatings, extortion, racketeering etc. nor does it do anything to reduce the amount of expertise in bomb-making. As for the marching, I had a senior member of the Black Order say to me "there's no good march unless there's a riot"

The Unionist's are unlikely to give this much credence without photographic or other evidence either.

[Cookie]

If enough pressure comes from the governments, independant observers and media as well as the people in general the unionists will have to eventually accept that decommissioning has been completed. only time will tell if the other things you mention stop.

[h00nta]

Only time will tell, it's a step in the right direction though.

[Powa]

Get rid of that Presbytarian leader Paisley and then they can go forward. As in my view, he is the only one holding this back. Sad, sad, old man

[FlibbyFlobby]

I find it funny how the IRA are treated in comparison to terrorists like those who had a hand in 9/11 or 7/7. Just because the IRA engage in dialogue it makes it ok for what they've done to go unpunished (in many cases). Its even funnier when Blair gave a speech to the EU about deporting terrorists and not giving in to terrorism when the IRA are always off the hook and we havent actually deported any radical clerics from Britain, they have all left on their own will.

[Cookie]

First off before i'll state that the IRA were viscious killers but who now have hopefully gone away. Secondly, and i'm not defending them here, but, i suppose one immediate comparison is that the IRA did phone in alot of warnings prior to explosions. I'm not condoning this but many other terrorists did not and do not warn. The IRA for the most part (although there are examples to the counter) focused on military and government targets whereas many other terrorists target only the public. And finally at least the IRA seem now to have realised that they didn't and would not have accomplished anything if they continued their campaign of violence.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Retired Canadian general John de Chastelain.

Sep. 26, 2005. 12:10 PM

IRA has disarmed, Canadian general affirms

SHAWN POGATCHNIK

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The Irish Republican Army has put its arsenal of weapons ?beyond use,? the retired Canadian general who has supervised the tortuous process said today.

?We are satisfied that the arms decommissioning represents the totality of the IRA?s arsenal,? said Gen. John de Chastelain, who since 1997 has led efforts to disarm the outlawed IRA.

The material included ammunition, rifles, machine-guns, mortars, missiles, handguns and explosives, he told a news conference.

All the weapons were rendered ?permanently inaccessible or permanently unusable,? said de Chastelain, who began working on the process eight years ago.

The IRA permitted two independent witnesses ? a Methodist minister and a Roman Catholic priest close to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams ? to view the secret disarmament work conducted by officials from Canada, Finland and the United States.

De Chastelain, who in recent weeks has been in secret locations overseeing the weapons destruction, earlier in the day gave representatives of the British and Irish governments a confidential report on his work.

The breakthrough should smash the biggest stumbling block in Northern Ireland?s peace process since Britain opened negotiations with Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, a decade ago.

But most politicians and analysts say the IRA move comes years too late to kickstart the revival of a Catholic-Protestant administration, the central dream of Northern Ireland?s 1998 peace accord. That complex, landmark agreement required the IRA to disarm by May 2000.

Years of denial and delay have sharpened Protestant distrust of Sinn Fein. Moderates willing to take risks were trounced in elections by hardliners.

Rev. Ian Paisley, whose uncompromising Democratic Unionist party represents most Protestants today, has dismissed the disarmament process as inadequate. Paisley wants photographs, a detailed record and a Paisley-approved Protestant clergyman to serve as an independent witness.

?Will unionist demands for open, verifiable, photographed and witnessed decommissioning be adhered to or not?? Paisley said. ``The day for deception is over. The day for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth has come.?

The IRA declared its 35-year campaign to overthrow Northern Ireland by force ? which claimed 1,800 lives before its 1997 suspension ? officially over in July.

Members had been commanded to ?dump arms,? the IRA said, without being explicit. This left wiggle room to retain firearms for crime, intimidation and self-protection.

Britain first demanded IRA arms decommissioning ? a deliberately vague term designed to give the IRA maximum flexibility to decide how weapons should be discarded ? in December 1993. It was billed as the best practical way for the IRA to demonstrate it had renounced violence.

The British focus on weapons reflected the view that the IRA hit the weapons-supply jackpot in the mid-1980s, when Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi shipped the IRA more than 130 tonnes of weaponry in four shiploads. The IRA couldn?t quit, the reasoning went, when it was much better armed than ever before.

The IRA?s stockpile, particularly large quantities of plastic explosives, represented an ability to bomb London for decades if desired. Only if the IRA gave it up, Britain insisted, would Sinn Fein, the IRA?s legal political arm, gain a place in negotiations on Northern Ireland?s future.

The IRA didn?t budge, and abandoned a 1994 ceasefire with a two-tonne truck bomb in London?s financial district in February 1996. When Prime Minister Tony Blair rose to power in 1997, he allowed Sinn Fein into talks with a renewed ceasefire but no disarmament. Since then, keeping Protestant politicians on the road to compromise with Sinn Fein has been a constant battle.

Arguments over whether the IRA has fully disarmed appear certain.

De Chastelain has said he would use Libya?s lists of the weaponry it supplied the IRA as a baseline for estimating whether the IRA has fully disarmed. But nobody besides the IRA can say how much weaponry it has acquired from smugglers in the United States, former Yugoslavia and eastern Europe over the last decade.

In 2000 ? the same year the IRA promised to disarm ? the FBI busted an IRA weapons-smuggling unit after it had shipped more than 100 handguns from Florida in packages disguised as children?s toys and Christmas presents.

Some of those weapons have been forensically linked to IRA killings of several paramilitary and criminal opponents, including drug dealers and an IRA dissident. Police also have seized IRA stashes of recently produced bullets.

Police say the IRA used handguns and hostage-taking expertise to carry out several huge robberies in Belfast last year, including a $50-million US raid on the Northern Bank in December ? the biggest cash theft in history.

But IRA members armed with steel clubs and knives caused an even bigger political storm in January, when they killed a Catholic civilian, Robert McCartney, for arguing with IRA members in a Belfast pub.

?The Northern Bank robbery and the murder of Robert McCartney demonstrate that the IRA does not require crates of Kalashnikov rifles or surface-to-air missiles to destabilize and derail the peace process: It just needs a knife,? said veteran Northern Ireland journalist Ed Moloney, author of the Secret History of the IRA.

?The problem is no longer the quality and quantity of the IRA?s weapons,? he said. ?The problem has become the existence of the IRA itself.?

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...id=968332188492