BELFAST, Northern Ireland, 29 July 2005 — The IRA, which killed and maimed thousands in a 35-year campaign against British rule, yesterday renounced violence as a political weapon, a move hailed by the British and Irish governments as a decisive step toward a permanent peace.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the statement “a step of unparalleled magnitude,” while Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland said it heralded “the end of the IRA as a paramilitary organization.”
But local leaders and some analysts warned that the underground organization, which has previously fallen short of its public promises, had left key questions unanswered and will not disband.
The IRA said all of its clandestine units had been ordered to dump arms and cease all activities, effective 4 p.m. yesterday. In a departure from traditional practice, the IRA’s electronically distributed statement was read in a DVD presentation by IRA veteran Seanna Walsh, 48. He was one of the IRA’s longest-incarcerated prisoners, spending 21 years behind bars for making explosives, possessing a rifle and robbing a bank.
“The leadership has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign,” the IRA said in a major advance from its open-ended truce in place since 1997. “All volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programs through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever,” the IRA command said in remarks addressed to the group’s approximately 500 to 1,000 members.
The IRA statement said John de Chastelain, a retired Canadian general who since 1997 has been trying to persuade the IRA and other illegal groups to disarm, would be invited to decommission more hidden weapons bunkers soon. It said a Catholic priest and Protestant minister would be invited to witness the scrapping of weapons.
The IRA also appealed to Britain and Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority to accept its new position as sufficient to resume negotiations on power-sharing, the core goal of the 1998 peace accord for this British territory.
“I welcome the statement of the IRA that ends its campaign. I welcome its clarity,” Blair said in his Downing Street office in London. “I welcome the recognition that the only route to political change lies in exclusively peaceful and democratic means. This is a step of unparalleled magnitude in the recent history of Northern Ireland.”
And Ahern, who has worked closely with Blair since 1997 to broker compromise in the British territory, said the IRA statement heralded “the end of the IRA as a paramilitary organization.”
But Protestant leaders, deeply suspicious of IRA motives, stressed they would wait several months to test whether the IRA’s words proved true. They noted that the IRA was supposed to have disarmed fully by mid-2000 as part of the Good Friday accord, but did not start the process until late 2001 and stopped in 2003.
Calling the IRA decision “courageous,” Sinn Fein leader Jerry Adams said it “can help revive the peace process” and challenged the Protestant community to respond.
In Washington, US President George W. Bush’s chief spokesman Scott McClellan called the announcement “an important and potentially historic statement.”
