IRA gives up entire arsenal

2005-09-26 19:39

Belfast - The Irish Republican Army has given up its entire arsenal of weapons, said the Canadian general who supervised the tortuous process on Monday.

A retired Canadian general who since 1997 had led efforts to disarm the outlawed IRA, John de Chastelain, said: "We are satisfied that the arms decommissioning represents the totality of the IRA's arsenal."

De Chastelain said the material included ammunition, rifles, machine guns, mortars, missiles, handguns and explosives.

He said all the weapons were rendered "permanently inaccessible or permanently unusable".

The IRA followed up the announcement with a brief statement of its own that concluded: "The IRA leadership can now confirm that the process of putting our arms verifiably beyond use has been completed."

Secret disarmament work

The IRA permitted two independent witnesses - a Methodist minister and a Roman Catholic priest close to Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams - to view the secret disarmament work conducted by officials from Canada, Finland and the United States.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "Successive British governments have sought final and complete decommissioning by the IRA for more than 10 years.

"Failure to deliver it had become a major impediment to moving forward the peace process. Today it is finally accomplished.

"And we have made an important step in the transition from conflict to peace in Northern Ireland."

Earlier in the day, De Chastelain gave representatives of the British and Irish governments a confidential report on his work.

IRA hands over whole arsenal

He said the decommissioning was completed on Saturday and that he had checked and counted all the weaponry involved.

Questioned by reporters, de Chastelain said he could not be absolutely certain that every IRA weapon had been disposed of, but he said he believed the IRA was sincere in saying it had handed over the whole arsenal.

He also said the amount was consistent with police and army estimates of the IRA's arms holdings.

The breakthrough should overcome the biggest stumbling block in Northern Ireland's peace process since Britain opened negotiations with Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, in December 1994.

Confidence, generosity

Senior Sinn Fein official Mitchel McLaughlin said he hoped IRA disarmament would promote "confidence and generosity in response from our opponents".

Most politicians and analysts agreed the IRA move came years too late to lead to a quick revival of a Roman Catholic-Protestant administration, the central goal of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord.

That complex, landmark agreement required the IRA to disarm by May 2000.

Years of denial and delay had sharpened Protestant distrust of Sinn Fein. Moderates willing to take risks were defeated by hardliners in elections.

A political professor at Queen's University, Paul Bew, said: "We're into a period of several months, if not years, of political delay yet."

- AP