PIRA ready to scrap weapons 'in days'

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday September 03, 2005 19:46 by Al

The PIRA is to begin dismantling its weapons arsenal within days. Full decommissioning and surrender should be completed in weeks, sources close to the British and Irish governments said yesterday.

The disarmament chief, retired Canadian general John de Chastelain, arrived in Ireland on Wednesday after a Finnish brigadier, Tauno Nieminen, was appointed to his three-man team in anticipation of the heavy workload over the next few weeks.

The British and Irish governments have been anxious for disarmament to begin since the PIRA's statement in July that its armed struggle with Britain was over. Full recognition of the partitionist states and the final surrender of all weapons will happen as quickly as possible".

When decommissioning begins, weapons will be destroyed in a series of separate acts. Once these are complete and all the PIRA's weapons are gone, General de Chastelain will report to the governments. A source close to the British government said the general's report was expected "as soon as physically possible".

He is also expected to give the governments an inventory of arms that have been surrendered, but it is not clear when that could be published.

The PIRA's arms cache is thought to include M60 machine guns, Armalite rifles, AK-47s, handguns, explosives and timer devices stored at various locations.

In its three previous acts of decommissioning, the PIRA has demanded confidentiality. This was to try and keep the scale of these acts from their supporters.

The rumour went out to their followers that only old weaponary was given up, this has recently been found to be false. Sources from both governments have recently spoke of the sheer scale of the modern arms they have previously destroyed.

All sides are keen to avoid a repeat of the debacle of two years ago when General de Chastelain emerged from witnessing the secret act of decommissioning and, restricted by confidentiality, was unable to provide enough detail to satisfy the Ulster Unionists.

David Trimble then pulled the plug on the process which was to lead to the restoration of a power-sharing Stormont assembly.

This time two clergymen, one Protestant and one Catholic, will be invited to witness the final disarmament process and afterwards state to the public they were there.

Ian Paisley's hardline Democratic Unionist party will get the photographic evidence of decommissioning that it demanded, but only in private.

The Irish justice minister, Michael McDowell, said this week that he did not expect decommissioning would happen by "one single press of a button or by one single act of decommissioning, at one single place." Disarmament would involve a series of acts which would happen "in one sequence of events" and "in fairly rapid order", he said.

The next test for Northern Ireland's political process is a report next month by the ceasefire watchdog, the International Monitoring Commission, examining whether the PIRA has stuck to its word not to engage in criminal activities or recruitment since it announced the war was over.