Mr Martin McGuinness has informed the inquiry the Provisional IRA had less than 50 volunteers and an armoury of only 20 or 25 weapons, some obsolete, in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday,writes Dick Grogan.
In his signed statement to the inquiry, which has been selectively "leaked" to the media, he also states emphatically that he will not reveal the identities of those (other than himself) who were IRA members on January 30th, 1972, when the British army shot dead 13 civilians and wounded some 15 others.
Mr McGuinness, who admits having been second-in-command of the Derry Provisionals at the time, insists he was unarmed throughout the Civil Rights march which ended in the killings.
He says all Provisional IRA weapons were placed in a closed dump for the duration of the march, except for the arms held by two "active service units", totalling about eight people, who were left on patrol on the periphery of the Free Derry area in case the troops should invade from the rear.
Mr McGuinness describes as "incredible" the suggestion by lawyers for British soldiers that IRA volunteers were killed on Bloody Sunday and secretly buried later. He states definitively that no member of the (Provisional) IRA was either killed or injured that day - "Had this happened I would have known. Indeed the entire community in Derry would have known."
He states that shortly after the paratroopers carried out the killings, the Provisionals weighed up the situation and decided not to retaliate immediately. "If we brought weapons into the area we would give the British army an excuse to go further," his statement says. "Therefore, the decision was taken not to engage the British forces. Weapons were not to be taken from the dump and volunteers were not to be allowed to attack."
He says this was a collective decision which accorded with his personal view, even though his first reaction after hearing of the shootings had been that "I wanted to get a rifle, find other volunteers and try to do something . . . " However, after a quick meeting, the Provisional IRA men in the Bogside area "formed the view that what was happening in Rossville Street was an attempt to draw the IRA into a fight". He adds: "It was concluded that any military engagement with the British army then would see us fall into a trap . . ." He says that although "people were angry, infuriated and emotionally all over the place", he is confident no one disobeyed the decision not to fight back at the time.
Only two people had access to the weapons dump in the Bogside that day, he reveals, and he was one of the two. "Anybody who wanted to use weapons that day and who was not in one of the two cars (which were left on patrol) would have had to come to me, and no one did so."
Mr McGuinness says any Provisionals who took part in the march (as he did) would not have had personal hand weapons. He admits, however, that "much later in the evening" he was party to a decision made by the Provisional IRA to fire a number of shots, symbolically, at an army observation post on Derry walls.
"Following this decision, shots were fired from the vicinity of the Bogside Inn by an IRA volunteer. I was not, however, present when this incident occurred."
He states there were no IRA explosive devices in the Bogside during the march.
Mr McGuinness estimated the Provisional IRA volunteers' strength in Derry at the time as having been "probably closer to 40 than 50". The organisation had "about 10 rifles of various kinds, some of them very old, about half a dozen short arms, and perhaps two or three sub-machineguns."