"The leadership of Oglaigh na h-Eireann announced on July 28 that we had authorized our representative to engage with the IICD to complete the process to verifiably put arms beyond use.
"The IRA leadership can now confirm that the process of putting our arms verifiably beyond use has been completed.
"P O`Neill"
With those words the IRA announced it had completed disarmament. The decommissioning of all its weapons was confirmed in Belfast by General John de Chastelain who said:
"We have observed and verified events to put beyond use very large quantities of arms, which we believe include all the arms in the IRA's possession."
"We have also made an inventory of them and we are satisfied the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA's arsenal."
"The Commission has determined the IRA has met its commitment to put all its arms beyond use in a manner called for by legislation."
As reported in the Belfast Telegraph the General added the issue of arms in possession of loyalist paramilitaries still needed to be addressed by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning and called on those with influence to use to it to help in that regard.
The churchmen who witnessed the decommissioning were ex-Methodist president Harold Good and Catholic priest Father Alex Reid.
In a statement they said: "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."
Of course, none of this was good enough for some.
Democratic Unionist Party leader the Reverend Ian Paisley said the announcement showed the ``duplicity and dishonesty of the two governments and the IRA''. He said the announcement by General de Chastelain did not meet the requirements of proof the unionist people demanded.
Democratic Unionist Party MP Jeffrey Donaldson said he remained to be convinced about IRA disarmament. He said: “We need greater transparency of this process and we’ve been left short on detail. There has been a lot of fine rhetoric and fine words, but there is little substance. That is the difficulty.”
However North Antrim Sinn Féin MLA Philip McGuigan said in a statement released today that Unionism can no longer use the IRA as an excuse for not sharing power with nationalists and republicans. He also added that that there is now a greater onus than ever on unionist politicians to work to achieve the full decommissioning of the unionist paramilitary weapons that are still clearly active in the north of Ireland. “Today truly is an historic day for the Peace Process. I am confident that this is the conclusion of the final chapter on the issue of IRA arms. I would like to echo the words of the Rev Harold Goode who said that he “was beyond any shadow of a doubt” that the arms of the IRA have been put beyond use.”
McGuigan said, "Of course, this is about more than arms. It is about the reviving the peace process, it is about the future of Ireland. And this places an enormous responsibility on the British and Irish governments to finally implement the Good Friday Agreement in all its aspects on issues like equality, human rights, policing, demilitarization and northern representation. It will also place a huge responsibility on the leadership of the DUP to re-engage in the political process. I am looking forward to seeing the DUP putting the same vigor and energy into the issue of putting unionist guns and pipe-bombs, which are still very much active in the north, beyond use as they did regarding the silent military hardware of the IRA.”
“This process has been an understandably difficult one for republicans, including republicans in North Antrim. There will be some who are concerned about the future. But I believe that we need to face up to this opportunity in a positive mood. This is not a time to be uncertain it is a time to be confident and energized and forward looking. There has been a consultation process with republicans throughout this area who although concerned are still fully supportive of and understand the need to move this process forward.”
“There is a lot of work to do if we are to get the process back on track and get all of the guns out of Irish politics. Sinn Féin is about taking all of the guns out of Irish politics - Unionist paramilitaries, British Army and PSNI. I would like to think that the two governments and others in the political establishment will pay as much attention to this task as they did to silenced IRA weapons. We also need to see the Irish and British governments show real leadership and deal with all of the outstanding issues - these are not new issues, they are not new demands there are key parts of the Good Friday Agreement that have still to be implemented. As part of the outworking of the IRA's decision to end its campaign we need to see the release of all republican prisoners and an end to the ongoing discrimination against republican ex prisoners."
The IRA’s disarmament is certainly not without risk.
Damien Kiberd writes in today’s Daily Ireland:
“The IRA is taking a massive risk in all of this. Everybody in the upper reaches of the Republican Movement knows that the reason the modern IRA was created was not because of any belief in a united Ireland but because of a practical need to defend Catholic districts, mainly in Belfast.”
“…the events of 1969 were not an aberration or an isolated incident. Catholic families had been attacked, murdered and burned out in almost every decade of the 20th century.”
”One has to ask what the republican movement will do if loyalists revert to their previous form and simply decide to burn out their neighbors? It is a magnificent thing to “dump arms” and issue a challenge to everybody else in the political world, but in practical terms what will republicans do if loyalists attack districts occupied by Catholics?”
“If the loyalist mob decides to turn on its Catholic neighbor, then who will protect those who are targets? It is by no means clear.” Sources: Belfast Telegraph, Ireland On Line, UTV, McGuigan Press Release, Daily Ireland
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