Monitor reports IRA’s weapons ‘beyond use’

updated 9:41 a.m. ET Sept. 26, 2005

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The Irish Republican Army has put its arsenal of weapons “beyond use,” the Canadian general who has supervised the tortuous process said Monday.

“We are satisfied that the arms decommissioning represents the totality of the IRA’s arsenal,” said John de Chastelain, a retired Canadian general who since 1997 has led efforts to disarm the outlawed IRA.

The material included ammunition, rifles, machine-guns, mortars, missiles, handguns and explosives, he told a news conference.

All the weapons were rendered “permanently inaccessible or permanently unusable,” said de Chastelain, who began working on the process eight years ago.

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.

De Chastelain, who in recent weeks has been in secret locations overseeing the weapons destruction, earlier in the day gave representatives of the British and Irish governments a confidential report on his work.

Biggest stumbling block
The breakthrough should smash the biggest stumbling block in Northern Ireland’s peace process since Britain opened negotiations with Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, a decade ago.

Unfortunately, most politicians and analysts agree, the IRA move comes years too late to kickstart the revival of a Catholic-Protestant administration, the central dream of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord. That complex, landmark agreement required the IRA to disarm by May 2000.

Years of denial and delay have sharpened Protestant distrust of Sinn Fein. Moderates willing to take risks were trounced in elections by hard-liners.

The Rev. Ian Paisley, whose uncompromising Democratic Unionist Party represents most Protestants today, has dismissed the coming IRA moves as inadequate. Paisley wants photographs, a detailed record and a Paisley-approved Protestant clergyman to serve as an independent witness.

The IRA insists: No photos, and witnesses of its own choosing.

“Will unionist demands for open, verifiable, photographed and witnessed decommissioning be adhered to or not?” Paisley said. “The day for deception is over. The day for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth has come.”

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