The IRA's arsenal of weapons, explosives and ammunition has been put beyond use in a massive decommissisioning operation which lasted several days, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning confirmed yesterday. Gerry Moriarty, Mark Brennock, and Mark Hennessy report.
But DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley accused the British and Irish governments of duplicity and said the decommissioning body had failed to provide numerical detail to support his claims that the IRA had fully decommissioned.
The Irish and British governments welcomed what they called a landmark development. Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said the IRA's unprecedented decommissioning was total.
The decommissioning exercise was witnessed by the former president of the Methodist Church, the Rev Harold Good, and the Redemptorist priest, Fr Alec Reid. They said the process had demonstrated to them that, "beyond any shadow of doubt", the arms of the IRA had been decommissioned.
Gen de Chastelain, head of the decommissioning body, did not provide an inventory but said that the large amounts of weaponry put beyond use were consistent with the British and Irish security forces' estimates of what the IRA had secreted in its dumps around Ireland.
He said weapons included rifles, handguns, machine-guns, flame- throwers, surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weaponry. He said nobody could be absolutely sure the IRA had fully disarmed but the IICD was "satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA's arsenal".
The IRA, in a short statement, said that the "process of putting our arms verifiably beyond use has been completed". The DUP, however, complained about the lack of an inventory; the fact that there were no photographs of the decommissioning; and the refusal of the IRA to allow the DUP to nominate one of the clerics who independently witnessed the disarmament.
Dr Paisley, who is meeting Gen de Chastelain this morning, said the events around yesterday's announcement of decommissioning illustrated "the duplicity and dishonesty" of the British and Irish governments and the IRA. "Instead of openness there was the cunning tactics of cover-up and a complete failure from General John de Chastelain to deal with the vital numerics of decommissioning," said Dr Paisley.
His comments were at odds with the statement from former Methodist president the Rev Good and Fr Reid. The Rev Good said he and Fr Reid were "utterly certain" that the IRA had disarmed "because we spent many days watching the meticulous and painstaking way in which Gen de Chastelain, Brig Gen Tauno Nieminen and Ambassador Andrew Sens went about the task of decommissioning the huge amounts of explosives, arms and ammunition".
"The experience of seeing this with our own eyes, on a minute-to-minute basis, provided us with evidence so clear and of its nature so incontrovertible that, at the end of the process, it demonstrated to us, and would have demonstrated to anyone who might have been with us, that beyond any shadow of doubt, the arms of the IRA have now been decommissioned," added Rev Good.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said what the IRA had done was "totally unprecedented" and "mighty". He added, "The general has overseen the process. The two independent witnesses have reported. There is no encore. That's it. It's finished. Done."
Notwithstanding the DUP's initial negative response to the IRA move the British and Irish governments believe that there is now real potential to open up political negotiations leading to the restoration of the Northern Executive and Assembly.
However senior Dublin and London sources last night acknowledged that it could take well into next year and possibly into 2007 before a power-sharing government involving Sinn Féin and the DUP could be established.