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Date Posted: 02:06:04 09/16/04 Thu GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: We must see IRA disarming (Washington Post)

washingtonpost.com
We Must See IRA Disarming, Says N.Irish Hard-liner
Reuters
Monday, September 13, 2004; 3:01 PM
By Alex Richardson

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - Disarmament by the Catholic militant Irish Republican Army (IRA) as part of a peace deal in Northern Ireland must be more transparent, a Protestant hard-liner said Monday.

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) deputy leader Peter Robinson, speaking in the run-up to a crucial summit later this week, said there should be some visual proof the group was decommissioning weapons.

The IRA fought a long campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland before paramilitary cease-fires in the 1990s.

The dispute over the pace of disarmament led to the collapse of Belfast's power-sharing government two years ago.

Robinson was commenting after meeting retired Canadian General John de Chastelain, head of an international body overseeing guerrilla disarmament.

De Chastelain has witnessed the IRA "putting weapons beyond use" on three occasions, but Protestant unionists say the disarmament process has been undermined by the fact each act has been shrouded in secrecy, with few details revealed.

"Ten years after someone calls a cease-fire there would have been an expectation that the weapons of war would have been decommissioned by now, they haven't been, and they must be, and there cannot be progress unless they are," Robinson said.

"And they are decommissioned in a way that is conclusive, verifiable and transparent, and when we talk about transparent we are talking about a visual aspect that can build confidence in the community that this is something which is now history."

The IRA put its first batch of weapons out of action in October 2001, followed by further batches in 2002 and 2003.

But wary of anything carrying connotations of surrender, it has allowed De Chastelain to make few details public beyond saying the amount of weapons involved was substantial.

Thursday, the prime ministers of Britain and Ireland will join Northern Ireland's political leaders for three days of talks at Leeds Castle, southern England, billed as a last chance to revive the U.S.-brokered Good Friday Agreement that largely brought an end to three decades of violence in the province.

Under the 1998 accord, a regional legislature and executive were set up to share power between Protestant unionists, who want to keep constitutional ties to Britain, and Catholic nationalists and republicans, who favor a united Ireland.

But the Belfast-based government, which had powers to run most of the province's affairs, collapsed in October 2002, prompting Britain to reimpose direct rule from London.

To restore power-sharing London and Dublin must broker a deal between the DUP, the largest Protestant party, and the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein.

The DUP, which currently refuses to even speak to Sinn Fein, says the IRA must completely disarm and disband before it will contemplate sitting in government with the main Catholic party.

Sinn Fein is seeking agreement from Britain to transfer policing and justice powers from London to Belfast and drastically scale back its military presence. It also wants a cast iron guarantee unionists will work with it in government.

De Chastelain's return to Belfast Monday has prompted speculation the IRA could be preparing to make a new move on disarming, but many analysts remain skeptical about whether a comprehensive deal can be reached this week.
© 2004 Reuters

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