The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) has reported "some significant changes" in reducing the scale of the British military presence in Northern Ireland although there is no notable reduction in troop levels.
The second report of the IMC published yesterday shows that troop levels at around 15,000 are well ahead of the envisaged figure of 5,000 soldiers that would be garrisoned in Northern Ireland in the event of the full cementing of the peace and political process.
The IMC, however, also states that troop levels are dictated by the perceived security threat and that full normalisation, or demilitarisation, as envisaged in the Hillsborough joint declaration of April 2003 could not be achieved until the paramilitary threat has effectively disappeared.
"Normalisation of security arrangements is contingent upon, and has to be measured against the prevailing assessment of the security threat. The level of community support the police enjoy is also a vital factor," the IMC states.
This report focuses mainly on demilitarisation and unlike its first report in April this year does not deal in any detail with republican and loyalist paramilitary activity. Its third report in the autumn will provide the latest assessment of the level of paramilitary activity.
This second IMC report compares the British army presence in the North with December 1999. It is generally devoid of criticism in accordance with article 2 of the international agreement setting up the IMC.
Under this article the British government requested the IMC to provide an account, effectively without recommendations or comment, on the level of demilitarisation to date. However, if the paramilitaries went out of business as envisaged in the Hillsborough joint declaration then the IMC under article 5 (1) would be entitled to report on whether the British government was honouring its commitments under the declaration to demilitarise and reduce troop levels to 5,000 over a two-year period.
The IMC in this report states that the number of military towers and observation posts has more than halved, from 19 to nine.
"By September this year the number of locations where the army is jointly based with the police will have nearly halved, from 20 to 12.
"The gap between the number of military bases and installations in Northern Ireland and the projected peacetime number of 14 has been nearly halved, from 32 to 24," the report adds. "The average monthly number of military personnel available to support the PSNI has reduced by 11 per cent, from 16,344 to 14,615," it says. Almost 2,000 of these troops are in England in reserve to be sent to the North if necessary.
The IMC further reports that army helicopter operational hours flown in Northern Ireland has fallen by 33 per cent from 24,734 hours in 1999-2000 to 16,566 hours in 2003-2004. It says the level of annual complaints about army helicopter use is between 420 and 540 per year.
The report in particular states that overall level of deployment of the army in Northern Ireland has not reduced very significantly since 1999, though the level of actual use of the army in support of the police "has reduced considerably and the nature of that use has altered substantially".
And while it states that the "enabling environment" or "acts of completion" referred to in the joint declaration has not been fully realised it adds that "that does not mean that acts of normalisation consistent with the prevailing assessment of the security threat cannot be proceeded with".
