BELFAST, Northern Ireland, 27 September 2005 — The Irish Republican Army has given up its entire arsenal of weapons, the Canadian general who supervised the tortuous process said yesterday.
“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, de Chastelain told a news conference.
All the weapons were rendered “permanently inaccessible or permanently unusable,” said de Chastelain.
Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA-linked party Sinn Fein, hailed the move as “a very brave and a very bold leap” aimed at bringing peace to the province.
But the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, which has resisted dealing with the IRA’s political allies, was not persuaded. While Ian Paisley accepted that the IRA had disposed of some weapons, he said the process was not transparent and gave no assurance that all the weapons were gone.
“You can’t build the bridge of trust with the scaffolding of lies and underhand deals,” Paisley told a news conference. He accused the British and Irish governments of “duplicity and dishonesty” in accepting the IRA’s assurances.
The IRA followed up de Chastelain’s 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.”
The IRA permitted two independent witnesses — a Methodist minister and a Roman Catholic priest close to Adams — to view the secret disarmament work conducted by officials from Canada, Finland and the United States.
“Successive British governments have sought final and complete decommissioning by the IRA for over 10 years,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. “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.”
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said he accepted the word of de Chastelain and his colleagues.
Earlier in the day, de Chastelain gave representatives of the British and Irish governments a confidential report on his work. He said the decommissioning was completed 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 in December 1994 with Sinn Fein.
Most politicians and analysts agree the IRA move comes 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.
