SAOIRSE32

Belfast Telegraph

It’s summit to be proud of

By Marie Foy
27 September 2005

click to open spectacular view of Belfast - photo from Belfast Hills

The Divis and Black Mountain park scheme in Belfast, which cost £1.33m, provides a space for people to exercise, take in amazing views and educate children about wildlife, flora and fauna. For decades the mountain was closed to the public. It was bought by the Ministry of Defence in the 1980s.

For years the land was used as an illegal dump, a place where vandals congregated and an eyesore.

However, with the help of a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and other partners The National Trust bought the site and launched a rescue plan to restore and reclaim the land.

Since November 2004 people from both sides of the political divide, business groups, Army members, community groups and young offenders have given 1,200 volunteering hours each month to remove 5,000 tonnes of rubbish from the mountain.

Now people from all walks of life visit the region. School groups, a rambling group for people with disabilities and fitness groups all enjoy the area’s natural resources.

The Trust has built a car park on site. This allows people to park and walk safely across the mountains.

Dave Morton, from The National Trust, said: “The park offers people with disabilities the chance to be able to move around in an open and rugged space.

“A group of disabled ramblers have already visited the park and found it to be a rewarding experience.

“The group had never imagined they would one day be able to get up the 1,500ft Divis they had seen from their homes in Belfast.”

Others who benefit include a group for mothers called Sure Start, which uses the mountain park regularly to help them keep fit, and a partnership has been set up with a local school where the mountain guides teach the children about nature. Duke of Edinburgh groups are also frequent visitors as part of their expeditions.

Belfast Telegraph

**This is great news!!

By Nigel Gould
27 September 2005

Northern Ireland has its first children’s heart nurse, it was revealed today.

Claire Hopkins, who will be based at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Belfast, will work with families throughout the province.

Today’s announcement was made by the Northern Ireland Chest, Heart and Stroke Association, together with the children’s heart charity, Heartbeat.

Experts believe the appointment, which has been made possible thanks to the support of the BBC’s Children in Need appeal and the staff of the Northern Bank, will bridge the gap between GPs and heart specialists.

A spokesman said: “Many families have problems which they fear are too trivial to bother a consultant cardiologist with, but which may be beyond the scope of a local health centre.

“The Children’s Heart Nurse, or Paediatric Cardiac Liaison Sister, to give the full title, is specially trained in dealing with cardiac conditions in younger patients.”

Brenda Fisher, who lives in Kilkeel, wishes a Children’s Heart Nurse had been in place when her daughter Chloe was born with a serious heart defect.

She said: “What I needed when Chloe was so ill was an expert to call at our house to offer advice and reassurance.

“As a parent you can phone the hospital ward staff for support, but that’s not quite the same as having a specialist member of medical staff come to see your baby at home.”

Myrtle Neill, director of Health at the NI Chest, Heart and Stroke Association, said the “pioneering new service” would make a big difference to families.

Irish Times

“Welcome to loyalist Seymour Hill,” says the writing on one wall at the entrance to the big Lisburn housing estate. There’s a neat Union flag painted under that one. On another wall, there’s an angrier message: “PSNI scum. Republican puppets. Loyal to Sinn Féin, not the queen.” Susan McKay reports on local sentiment in Lisburn.

There’s also a small wooden sign nailed on to an ash tree. “Christ died for our sins.” This one is signed, “YCM.” “I think that stands for Young Christian Men,” says a young local man, waiting for his burger at Scooby’s chip van. “It’s been there for years.”

There’s a war memorial with poppy wreaths across the road, commemorating those who died in two world wars and “the recent conflict”.

Most locals approached for comment in these parts are, unsurprisingly, disposed to be sceptical, if not downright dismissive, about IRA decommissioning. “Load of b******s,” says the young man at Scooby’s.

“They’re liars. How many guns have they stashed?”

The witness given by the Rev Harold Good cut no ice. “He said he saw it, did he? He better get away off to Specsavers.”

During the trouble which followed the rerouting of an Orange parade in Belfast earlier this month, loyalists blocked the main road outside the estate.

A young woman rang the BBC’s Talkback programme in tears. She said she was five months’ pregnant and was driving her child home when she was stopped.

She said a man punched her in the face, while those around him looked on. Other drivers also complained of threatening behaviour.

“Load of b******s,” says the young man.

A young woman in the queue beside him nods agreement. “I was on that protest,” she says. “You have to stand up for your community.”

Seymour Hill was also the place where, a few years ago, Brig Jackie McDonald’s South Belfast UDA crucified a teenager who had been a habitual car criminal. He suffered serious injuries.

The young man and woman agreed the UDA played an important role in Seymour Hill. Should the loyalist paramilitaries follow the IRA’s example and decommission?

“No way,” says the young man. “The UDA protects this community. It doesn’t cause any trouble. The trouble that was here this last week or two was caused by the police.”

He says he is a member of the Royal Air Force.

A group of workmen are fixing a footpath. “Three of us are Protestants and one of us is Catholic,” says one of them. “I’m the Catholic. But don’t point at me,” says another.

They all laugh. “Wouldn’t you know I’m the Catholic - the only one round here doing any work?” he quips and they all laugh again. “It’s good news the IRA has decommissioned,” says one of the others. “It’ll put pressure on the DUP to reciprocate.

“It’s easy being the opposition but now they are in power and it’s time we had local government back.”

Another of the men shakes his head in disagreement. “I wouldn’t trust the IRA,” he says. “If this is for real, why wouldn’t they put it on TV?”

An elderly man comes out with his messages from the small supermarket. From a car radio, local MP Jeffrey Donaldson can be heard saying the unionists are not convinced by Gen de Chastelain or by the the Rev Good.

“I think in Northern Ireland today, anything is worth a chance,” says the old man.

BBC

By Dominic Casciani
Belfast

Headline says it: But do people believe it?

The IRA has decommissioned its arms, according to international observers - but why has there been such a muted reaction?

It’s almost a decade since the IRA declared its first ceasefire.

But amid all the great leaps forward, devastating setbacks and terrible tragedies, hearing the Reverend Harold Good, a Protestant clergyman, tell the world that he had seen “minute by minute” the IRA give up all of its arms, was quite something.

An organisation that had declared after the Good Friday Agreement that it would never decommission - “not a bullet, not an ounce” went the graffiti in republican strongholds - showed that it was for turning. But how far had it turned?

UNIONIST SCEPTICISM

“Nobody around there in Sandy Row will believe they have decommissioned the lot - it’s just not in the IRA’s nature - if we’re talking real decommissioning, that means taking all the terrorists out of government”.
Snooker Club, Sandy Row

If the story of Northern Ireland’s peace process has been about anything, it is of trust. And what little trust that had built up between the parties in the seven years since the Good Friday Agreement evaporated amid prevarication, last minute collapses of deals and claims of double-dealing.

Mr Good and Father Alec Reid, his Catholic partner in witnessing the decommissioning, knew their job was to try to rebuild that trust - and their carefully chosen words were clearly aimed at doing so.

Earlier in September many Protestant areas of the city erupted with loyalist violence after an Orange Order march was prevented from walking the disputed Whiterock route: Loyalist paramilitaries fired on the police.

Today, there is new graffiti in some of these areas denouncing the Police Service of Northern Ireland: One fresh daubing near Albert Bridge, one of the seats of the violence, says “Police Serving Nationalist Interests”.

Sandy Row

In Sandy Row, a Protestant area of Belfast where the power of the paramilitaries has historically been strong, any hint of trust in either the republican movement or the wider process is largely missing.

Sandy Row: Loyalist paramilitaries not gone away

At the Players’ Lounge snooker hall, next to a loyalist ex-prisoner education centre, there was a great deal of scepticism.

“I don’t believe they’ve got rid of even half of what they hold,” said one young man. “We’re supposed to believe they only had a few hundred handguns - come on - who do they think we are?

“Nobody around there in Sandy Row will believe they have decommissioned the lot - it’s just not in their nature. If we’re talking real decommissioning, that means taking all the terrorists out of government.”

Another man said that the guns had only come thanks to “concession after concession” to the republican movement. What had happened to the investigation into the Northern Bank robbery, he asked. Why had Shankill Road bomber Sean Kelly been released? Why were the Army reducing their presence with so many unanswered questions?

Beyond the areas that have suffered the most, the mood is always slightly different. In Holywood, the town nearest to where the decommissioning announcement was made, the temperature was lower.

One Protestant woman said the guns were the symptom of the problem - and the problem was bigotry from both sides. Bigots could still buy more guns, she said.

Similarly, Belfast shoppers waiting for the evening bus home to Derry and the North West said they were willing to see what would happen.

Patrick Hugh, who works with young people and comes from a nationalist family, said he believed the Provisionals had done the right thing - but he wished that the loyalists had done the same.

This, he said, left a doubt in the minds of some nationalists who live in the areas that have experienced the most violence.

“I can see how the idea of defence of the community becomes an issue for some, such as the Markets or Short Strand. The same arguments can be heard on the Protestant side too.

“But if we want to get rid of that fear, then it’s up to the local politicians to step up and deal with the social conditions in the interests of all. You can’t just get rid of the guns - there has to be some kind of peace benefit for all.”

World weariness

But there is also a world-weariness these days in Northern Ireland - a feeling that many people are just so sick of it all that they almost don’t care what happens in the politics, providing they can get on with their lives.

David Doyle, 18, and Stephen Short, 20, were handing out stickers for a new nightclub, complete with comedy sailors hats. Like most young men of their age, they just want to have a good time and were fed up with the lot of them.

“There is always something that is going to prevent it ending,” said David. “Just look at the last few weeks with burning buses and barricades. If one community doesn’t like what is happening, they turn to this kind of thing.”

“I just want to ask all these people, what’s the point?” added Stephen. “We’ve supposedly had all these years of a peace process but sectarianism has got worse. There’s just no need for it.”

BBC

Gina Adair

Former loyalist terror chief Johnny Adair has been arrested on suspicion of assaulting his wife Gina.

Greater Manchester Police said the 41-year-old was arrested on Monday evening after officers were called to a park in Horwich, near Bolton.

Mr Adair was being questioned by officers on Tuesday.

He and his wife fled to Horwich after an internal feud within the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), of which he was once a senior member.

BBC

>>>IICD report in full (.pdf)

Ian Paisley said his party now wanted to meet the government

The DUP was “shocked” by what it learned in a meeting with decommissioning chief John de Chastelain, Ian Paisley has said.

He said the two church witnesses to disarmament were “IRA nominated” and the party now wants to meet them.

Catholic priest Father Alec Reid and ex-Methodist president Rev Harold Good were not appointed by the government or arms body, said Mr Paisley.

The party said the list of IRA weapons had been “revised and tampered with”.

“These are the things that put a very big question over what has taken place,” said Mr Paisley.

The DUP is now seeking a meeting with the British government.

It has questioned if the inventory list given by the intelligence services was accurate or “just cobbled together” for political expediency.

Mr Paisley claimed there had been a cover-up.

“We discovered that the witnesses turned up in the presence of the IRA. None of the commission heard from the government who the witnesses were,” he said.

“Nor did the government certify them - they were not appointed by the government.

“It was suggested that the commission appointed them. The commission said no… they came and introduced themselves in the presence of the IRA and they said ‘we are the appointed witnesses’.”

Mr Paisley said he was told some of the IRA’s weapons had already gone to dissident republican groups.

A DUP delegation is currently meeting the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) in Belfast.

Speaking after his party’s meeting with the arms body, SDLP chairman Alex Attwood said they felt “more reassured” that what was said in relation to IRA weapons had happened.

“Everybody needs to recognise that these men are nobody’s fools,” Mr Attwood said.

“Anybody who thinks they can make a fool of what those three men are trying to do and what the witnesses saw happen is very badly misled and misguided.”

Mr Attwood said that the issue of loyalist weapons was also raised and the party had encouraged the commission to keep working to bring about a situation where loyalist paramilitaries might act.

Earlier on Tuesday, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said unionist distrust was “natural”, but the IRA’s “historic move” brought the return of devolution closer.

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness is going to the US to brief Irish Americans.

The SDLP, the Ulster Unionists and the Alliance Party also have appointments with the general and his fellow commissioners on Tuesday.

‘Sceptical and suspicious’

Mr Hain said he could understand Mr Paisley’s scepticism, but asked him to respect the integrity of General de Chastelain.

“I wouldn’t have expected Ian or the unionists to just bowl over and welcome everything with open arms because they’ve got a lot of cause to be sceptical and suspicious over the behaviour of the IRA in the past,” he told BBC News on Tuesday.

“The IRA have often promised to do things and then reneged on them.”

The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) reports next month and in January would consider whether the IRA was delivering on its promise to cease paramilitary and criminal activity, Mr Hain said earlier.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams told BBC News on Tuesday: “There can be genuine concerns about all of this and people need some time to absorb it.

“But at the end of the day, are they (sceptical unionists) saying that de Chastelain and the other commissioners are liars? Are they saying that Harold Good is a liar, that Fr Alec Reid is a liar?

“Whatever about their views of Sinn Fein - or indeed Mr Blair or the taoiseach (Bertie Ahern) - is that what it amounts to?”

The White House has welcomed the IRA’s move as an “important first step” and the US State Department called on all paramilitary groups, whether loyalist or republican, to work with General de Chastelain to bring about complete disarmament.

Making his report on Monday, General De Chastelain said he had handled every gun and made an inventory of the ordnance, which was in line with estimates provided by the UK and Irish security services.

Newshound

(by Ed Moloney, Irish Times)

In the wake of yesterday’s decommissioning press conference in Belfast it is worth remembering that when John de Chastelain’s name was being floated by the British government way back in the winter of 1995 as a contender for chairman of the new Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD), the reaction of the then Irish government and the Provisional leadership bordered on panic.

The retired Canadian General had so many strikes against him from an Irish Nationalist viewpoint that Dublin and the Provos recruited Bill Clinton’s assistance in trying to get him replaced. Not only was he a Canadian of Scottish ancestry, and thereby regarded by some as both half-British and half-Loyalist, but both his parents had worked during the Second World War for British intelligence – his father as an MI6 agent in Eastern Europe and the Middle East and his mother on the payroll of Sir William Stephenson, Britain’s legendary New York- based spymaster.

How, asked the Provos and their friends in the Dublin government, could such a character be anything but biased in favour of the British and Unionists and against the IRA when his work overseeing IRA decommissioning would inevitably bring him into friendly contact with his parents’ old spooky colleagues and now the IRA’s bitter foes? Only with the greatest foreboding were their objections finally dropped.

Ten years on the Provos and the Irish government have nothing but praise for John de Chastelain and those early doubts about his impartiality, when recalled nowadays, are met with uncomprehending glares. Instead it is the Unionists who rage on about the former Canadian soldier.

The reasons were all on show once again in the Culloden Hotel yesterday as they have been at each of the General’s three prior performances in front of Ireland’s media: the refusal to reveal by what method IRA arms had been put permanently beyond use or reach and a rejection of demands that an inventory of decommissioned weapons be published for all to see.

Indeed the General went further yesterday by revealing that not even the British and Irish governments will get the IRA inventory until all paramiltary arms have been decommissioned, including those of the UDA and the UVF. It promises to be a long wait.

The issue of the secrecy that surrounds decommissioning is not just about the public’s right to know. It is also about creating Unionist trust in the peace process and the intentions of the IRA in particular. And this is not just an academic matter either. Dissembling – or creative ambiguity as the governments prefer to call it – is the defining feature of the Irish peace process and no-one practises it more assiduously than the IRA and their political spokespersons, as the recent Northern Bank raid and murder of Robert McCartney demonstrated.

Add that to a natural, almost genetic disposition on the part of Unionism not to believe anything that comes from the mouths of the IRA and Sinn Féin and a conviction that the credulity of outsiders like General de Chastelain when dealing with the IRA is infinite and the result is what we have seen over the last four or five years – a decommissioning process of insufficient clarity and transparency to support a stable and evolving political settlement.

Despite an above-par performance from the General yesterday and the recruitment of two clerics as independent witnesses – only one of whom, the Rev Harold Good has a chance of being believed beyond the thin ranks of Protestant ecumenics – there is little doubt that the general Unionist scepticism about decommissioning will persist. Those who hope that yesterday’s press conference will stimulate an early revival of the Good Friday Agreement are almost certainly in for a disappointment.

So how did all this come about? Why is it that the Irish decommissioning process, in contrast to others such as those in central America, is so shrouded in secrecy and subterfuge?

One simple, although incomplete answer is that it is so because General de Chastelain allowed it to be so – hence the personal edge to Unionist frustration with and Nationalist approval of his efforts to date.

Under the terms of the decommissioning legislation passed in London and Dublin and the accompanying regulations, the head of the IICD has considerable leeway when it comes to making things public or not. He is allowed to keep things confidential but is not bound to do so. The arrangement which yesterday saw the modality of decommissioning and the audit of destroyed weapons kept secret is not the product of law but of a voluntary agreement reached between the General and the IRA’s representative.

General de Chastelain amplified this yesterday: “If we didn’t have confidentiality we wouldn’t have had any (decommissioning) events much less this one”, he declared, adding that “they (the IRA) made it clear to us that openness wouldn’t happen”. So from the General’s viewpoint secrecy was a vital part of the process without which the IRA would never have co-operated.

The conventional explanation for this is that the way IRA decommissioning was conceived, the fact that it would be voluntary, carried out by the IRA itself although verified independently and covered in a blanket of silence, was done specifically to avoid any impression that the IRA had been defeated and humiliated. After all, it was pointed out, this was all unprecedented stuff – no other armed group in Ireland’s Republican struggle had ever destroyed their weapons when warfare ended. The issue had to be handled with sensitivity.

That is all true but it is only part of the story. The rest of the explanation lies in the fact that the secrecy allowed the IRA leadership to claim to its grassroots that decommissioning either hadn’t happened or was of less significance than was being claimed. It was the perfect example of constructive ambiguity in practice, of the grease being applied to the wheels of the peace process.

When the IRA first decommissioned some weapons in October 2001 for instance grassroots supporters were told that the IICD had been given access to a compromised arms dump already under police surveillance. The IRA had therefore given away nothing of value. On the second occasion the rank and file were told that de Chastelain had been fooled, that the IRA’s engineering department had made up phony weapons and passed these off to the IICD.

These were far-fetched and ludicrous claims but to an audience unwilling to believe that the appalling vista they had been told didn’t exist was now visibly stretching out in front of them, these tales were straws which they grasped eagerly. And in the process the IRA leadership slowly got its membership used to the idea that weapons could be decommissioned without the sky falling in.

In fact they were able to demonstrate that disarming actually brought gains and for that they were indebted to the Unionist community whose already ingrained scepticism about the IRA’s bona fides was enhanced and inflated by the secrecy surrounding the process.

All this took its toll on David Trimble’s ability to captain the Unionist ship through the choppy peace process waters. His response – the only possible response his friends say – was to place obstacles in the way of Sinn Féin joining the power-sharing government until the IRA delivered and so the Good Friday Agreement lurched from one crisis or suspension to another. Eventually Trimble’s ship was scuppered; Ian Paisley is the new skipper and the prospects that the Good Friday Agreement will ever be revived must be dimmer.

Sinn Féin benefited from all this enormously. Unionists were seen in Ireland and abroad increasingly as the problem, sympathy surged in the Republic and in the North, Catholics turned increasingly to the younger.more aggressive Sinn Féin and away from the SDLP at election time. The end result is a Sinn Féin party that dominates Nationalism in the North and is building a stake in the South.

The secrecy surrounding decommissioning which General de Chastelain sanctioned may have been meant to make the ordeal of disarming easier for Sinn Féin and the IRA to bear but it had consequences which one doubts the General could ever have foreseen or intended.

No-one can seriously doubt that massive IRA decommissioning has taken place and that General de Chastelain and his witnesses were telling the truth yesterday, albeit a sadly incomplete truth, about what they saw.

Where the doubt exists now is over the worth of the exercise. The IRA’s weapons proved to be immensely valuable chips in Sinn Féin’s hands throughout the vexed years of negotiations and if they have now been finally surrendered it can only be because they have outlived their worth in the eyes of the Provo leadership and been replaced by other, more potent tokens such as the IRA itself, the persistent curse of criminality and the prospect of the Provos in the police force.

What General de Chastelain delivered yesterday was definitely not too little but it was almost certainly too late.

September 27, 2005
________________

Ed Moloney is a journalist and the author of A Secret History of the IRA.

This article appears in the September 27, 2005 edition of the Irish Times.

RTE

27 September 2005 12:15

The family of a Dublin man allegedly shot dead by the IRA met the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, this morning as part of their campaign to bring the killer to justice.

28-year-old Joseph Rafferty was shot dead as he arrived at his home in Ongar in west Dublin on 12 April.

Relatives of Mr Rafferty claim the shooting followed a dispute with a family connected to the IRA.
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Sinn Féin has denied the IRA were involved and has condemned the killing.

RTE

27 September 2005 10:57

Police in northeastern Spain are investigating a bomb blast near an electricity sub-station.

The station was not in use at the time and there were no injuries.

The explosion happened near Zaragoza and followed a warning in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA.

The Irish News Online

By Catherine McGrotty

Claims by a Limavady DUP councillor that the closure of Magilligan Prison was “another appeasement” to republicans have been dismissed as naive by Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein’s Patrick Butcher said the response from former DUP mayor of Limavady, George Robinson was predict-

able and factually inaccurate.

Mr Butcher said the area – one of outstanding natural beauty – must be developed as a world class tourist facility to provide employment adding value to the local economy, not draining resources.

Mr Butcher said there was also concern in the area the prison would be developed as a NATO training camp.

But this has been dismissed by the Prison Service.

BreakingNews.ie

27/09/2005 - 07:17:10

Senior members of the Sinn Féin leadership are fanning out across the country and beyond today to push home the significance of the IRA’s decommissioning move.

Party officials are also meeting the rank and file to calm nerves in the wake of the DUP’s almost total rejection of the initiative.

The IRA announced the complete destruction of its arsenal yesterday, but the DUP said the process was not transparent, despite being overseen by five highly respected witnesses.

Today, Martin McGuinness is due to visit Washington to sell the decommissioning move to senior US politicians, as well as Irish-Americans.

Gerry Adams, meanwhile, is due to attend the National Ploughing Championships in Cork along with Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, Mitchel McLaughlin and Michelle Gildernew.

Sinn Féin has already said that the onus is now on the Irish and British governments to put pressure on the DUP to share power with nationalists and to implement as much of the Good Friday Agreement as possible.

BreakingNews.ie

27/09/2005 - 07:22:10

The Democratic Unionist Party is due to meet the head of the decommissioning body today to discuss the completion of IRA disarmament.

Canadian General John de Chastelain announced yesterday that he had overseen the destruction of an IRA arsenal that corresponded to intelligence estimates provided by the Irish and British governments.

However, the DUP almost completely rejected the move due to the lack of photographic evidence.

This stance came despite the fact that the process was monitored by Gen. de Chastelain and his two highly respected colleagues on the decommissioning body, as well as Catholic priest Alex Reid and former Methodist president Harold Good.

DUP leader Ian Paisley is expected to press today for more detail about the weapons that were decommissioned, but it unclear if Gen. de Chastelain will provide such information.

Under his mandate, he can only reveal the extent of the weapons destroyed once the decommissioning of all republican and loyalist arms has been completed.

BBC

A crude explosive device has been discovered near Magherafelt in County Derry.

Army technical experts dealt with the object on the Castledawson Road on Monday night.

A gaelic football club was evacuated during the alert. The device also contained fireworks.

Police have appealed for information and asked people to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity to detectives in Magherafelt.

Indymedia Ireland

by Brian Nugent
Tuesday, Sep 27 2005, 12:08am

‘This is just a rundown of some recent revelations in Ireland that have come to light during the summer of 2005′.

>>>Read on

——————

BBC

Weaponry: Decommissioned, says arms body

Despite all of the speculation over the years, only the IRA knows the true extent of its arsenal.

However, General John de Chastelain, head of the international body charged with decommissioning paramilitary arms in Northern Ireland, says that the IRA has now put its weapons beyond use.

>>Hear General John de Chastelain speak to the press

While Gen de Chastelain says he will not reveal the exact nature of what he has seen rendered either unusable or unobtainable, in his briefing he gave some details of the decommissioning process - and suggested strongly that assessments published by Jane’s Intelligence Review, themselves drawn from security estimates, were accurate.

The IRA’s actions in Northern Ireland long ago left the security forces in no doubt that the organisation was in a position to fight a long campaign, providing it had the will to do so.

When Northern Ireland slid into conflict in the late 1960s and the Provisional IRA emerged, it was badly armed, relying on old guns from previous campaigns, commercial explosives and a complete lack of the logistical support needed to fight a campaign.

But as it reorganised and grew, it acquired a wider range of weapons from around the world and the skills to make increasingly sophisticated home-made bombs.

ESTIMATES OF WEAPONRY

The bulk of the IRA’s weaponry was Libyan supplied. It included machine guns, rifles, handguns, ammunition, Semtex plastic explosives, surface-to-air missiles and rocket launchers. However, not all of its was useful to the kind of conflict that the IRA wanted to fight, according to experts at Jane’s.

IRA WEAPONRY
–1,000 rifles
–2 tonnes of Semtex
–20-30 heavy machine guns
–7 Surface-to-air missiles (unused)
–7 flame throwers
–1,200 detonators
–11 rocket-propelled grenade launchers
–90 hand guns
–100+ grenades
–Source: Security estimates/Jane’s Intelligence Review

Security services have estimated the IRA has held about 1,000 rifles, thought to be mostly AK-47 assault rifles, perhaps two tonnes of Semtex, and large quantities of ammunition for the various firearms. The IRA was also known to hold a handful of highly accurate Barrett Light 50 sniper rifles, a weapon used to kill British soldiers in the border area of south Armagh.

In terms of heavy weaponry, the IRA is thought to have held Russian-made machine guns used to target helicopters in ambushes, successfully bringing one down in 1988. The IRA’s store of surface-to-air missiles, acquired for the same purpose, were never used. In both cases, analysts believe the IRA may have decided they were not appropriate weapons for their aims.

Semtex was however the most significant of the weapons: the virtually odourless plastic explosive is relatively easy to use because it is stable, unlike home-made bombs.

It however became a key component in the home-made bombs and mines, typically forming a small part of a larger device with sophisticated timers and detonators.

Another key device is the home-made mortar. This is basically a modified tube that can be aligned to fire an explosive round at a target, typically inside a security forces installation from some distance away.

The IRA’s largest mortar was first used in 1992 and pointed towards sophisticated ballistics and engineering skills within the organisation.

WHAT THE COMMISSION SAID

General John de Chastelain said the decommissioning took place over a number of long days that began at 6am and ended late at night. We don’t know where the decommissioning happened, other than somewhere on the island or Ireland.

Semtex: Key weapon

He and his two other independent inspectors say they handled every gun and rifle, weighed every box of ammunition and catalogued every piece of weaponry during the decommissioning.

He said that the amounts that they had handled and witnessed being “put beyond use” were consistent with the range of estimates that the security services had provided to them first in 1998 and then updated in 2004.

The total amount of weaponry was “greatly more” than that dealt with in the previous IRA decommissioning moves. Andrew Sens, another member of the commission, said he had handled “an immense amount of material”.

Gen de Chastelain said that it would probably take the IRA “a hell of a long time” to amass the same weaponry again, should it want to: this is a major concern for many sceptical of the IRA’s intentions. Many unionists believe that the IRA retains the capacity to re-arm, not least because of its alleged involvement in the £26.5m Northern Bank robbery in 2004.

However, the general said that he had received “second-hand” intelligence to suggest that IRA members had been “scouring” the country to gather in weaponry from members in the weeks running up to his formal meeting with the IRA for the decommissioning.

Gen de Chastelain said there had been “a lot of ammunition”. Some of it was still sealed in the manufacturer’s box, indicating it had been in storage for many years. Some of it came in “loose”, or in ammunition belts, indicating it had been recovered from individuals, local dumps or “active service units”, he said.

Gen de Chastelain said he had seen rifles, particularly AK-47s, machine guns, ground-to-air missiles, explosives, explosive material, mortars, flame throwers, hand guns, timer units and ballistic caps, a device that improves the flight path of a missile.

While the majority of the arms were heavy weaponry, the team had also decommissioned improvised weaponry.

Some of the weaponry was “very old”, said the general. He had handled a Bren machine gun, a 1930s weapon that he had trained with at the start of his military career.

He said that it was likely that given the age of some of the weaponry, and the condition in which it was presented to his team, it was entirely possible that the IRA itself no longer knew exactly what arms it had been keeping.

Arms dumps may have been forgotten about, particularly if someone charged with managing it had died.

BreakingNews.ie

26/09/2005 - 17:25:34

General John De Chastelain, head of the International Commission on Decommissioning, speaking at the Culloden Hotel in Belfast today.

Q – Just how vast was the quantity of arms and explosives decommissioned by the IRA.

A – General John de Chastelain and his team weighed all the explosives as well as counting and tagging every gun handed over. But even though they have a full inventory of the vast arsenal, details of just how much the IRA had hidden away were not revealed.

Q – Whereabouts in Ireland did it happen.

A – Apparently only the IRA know. The General, his two associates and the two churchmen who witnessed the minute-by-minute process were kept completely in the dark. For instance they were taken in the back of a van to secret locations before daybreak and it was late at night when they finished. No details were revealed about where they stayed, and how they knew where to first rendezvous with the Provisionals.

Q – How long did the process take.

A – The best part of a week and finished last Saturday. It was heavily supervised by senior IRA men, (including Belfast man Brian Keenan), who were involved in emptying all their dumps and transporting the arms to a location, believed to have been in the Irish Republic, where the counting and verification process started as early as 6am.

Q – How were the weapons decommissioned?

A – Even though the General said he was satisfied they will never be used again, he refused to disclose the method of how they were put beyond use. The General said he was unaware of any photographs being taken. Some security sources speculated tonight the arms could have been put into sealed containers and dumped at sea.

Q – Did the IRA retain some guns.

A – The General said he could not be sure. He was satisfied the quantities decommissioned tallied with security force estimates, but Unionists claimed it is inconceivable that the Provisionals handed over everything – a view shared tonight by some nationalists on the streets of west Belfast, the constituency of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.

Q – Is this the end of the IRA?

A – Republicans insist their campaign is over and are now committed to pursuing their aim of Irish re-unification by peaceful and democratic means. But the influence of the Provisionals is massive in the working class areas of Belfast and Derry and even though the punishment shootings have stopped, threats and intimidation remain.

Q – Have doubting Unionists been convinced by the General and the independent assessment of the two clergymen.

A – No. The Rev Ian Paisley declared tonight: “You cannot build bridges of trust with a scaffolding of lies and underhand deals. It must been open and above board.”

Q – What are the chances of early political progress in Northern Ireland?

A – Virtually none. It will be several months at least before British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern can begin to even consider launching a new initiative to get the peace process back and track. Unlike the euphoria in the aftermath of the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, guns or no guns, the mood on the streets of Belfast has never been more pessimistic.

Q – Who will make the next judgement call on the IRA.

A – The Independent Monitoring Commission which was set up by the British and Irish governments to monitor the IRA and loyalist ceasefires. Its next report is due out next month but it will be January 2006, six months after the Provisionals declared an end to its campaign, before they can make an accurate determination about their violence and criminality.

Q – Will the loyalists paramilitaries of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association begin decommissioning their weaponry.

A – No. There will be pressure for them to act as part of a confidence building process in advance of getting all sides around the negotiating table. But these are two criminal organisations with zero credibility who need their guns to reinforce the dominance of their own communities, even if it means shooting each other.