PUP says decision was not made on handover of weapons

No decision to decommission weapons has been made by paramilitary groups in the North, Mr Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive…

No decision to decommission weapons has been made by paramilitary groups in the North, Mr Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party, the UVF's political wing, said last night.

Mr Hutchinson was speaking after a BBC report based on an interview with him said methods of decommissioning had been agreed by Sinn Fein and the fringe loyalist parties.

The PUP spokesman told The Irish Times the parties at the Stormont talks had agreed on certain methods, but he stressed there had been no agreement by the IRA or loyalist paramilitary organisations to start actual decommissioning.

He said his interview with the BBC, which was broadcast last night, had been conducted around three weeks ago. He confirmed the methods of decommissioning had been agreed by the parties at the talks earlier this year.

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In the BBC interview, Mr Hutchinson said months of discussions between the politicians and the international body on decommissioning resulted in a set of ground-rules being drawn up for the handover of weapons.

Individual paramilitary groups will be given a special code word to authenticate any consignment of weapons being transferred. A British army or RUC escort during transfer will be available, he said. Those transporting either guns or explosives will be given immunity from prosecution. There will be no forensic tests on guns to try to link them with past killings. A nominee of the paramilitary group will be able to be present to verify the destruction of the weapons.

Mr Hutchinson, a former UVF prisoner, has been nominated by the UVF to be its middle man. He said the plan was that any handover of weapons would be put under the control of one person identified by a paramilitary group.

"There would obviously be a codeword and all that would be done so that people could actually see that it was the truth and that it was really going to happen," he told the BBC.

"These people would be given immunity to transfer the weapons to a certain point and they would watch those weapons being destroyed."

The Belfast Agreement sets a two-year deadline for decommissioning.

Neither the IRA nor the loyalist paramilitaries have given any substantial signals that they are considering a weapons' handover. Sinn Fein councillor, Mr Francie Molloy, who was his party's representative at the decommissioning discussions, said it was unlikely the IRA would decommission any guns or explosives.

"The IRA haven't been defeated and unless you have the defeat of one organisation over the other or one government over another then you don't have a surrender of weapons.

"What we want to do is create a change where weapons are no longer required and where the whole issue of weapons would simply rust away the same as previous weapons rusted away," he said.

Mr Gary McMichael, leader of the Ulster Democratic Party, the UDA's political wing, said: "These methods of decommissioning were agreed in principle by the parties several months ago. But no paramilitary group has agreed to decommission weapons nor have they given any indication they are about to do so."