May 8, 2000. Copyright 2000. Graphic News. All rights reserved.

TAKING THE GUNS OUT OF POLITICS

LONDON, May 8, Graphic News: NORTHERN IRELAND peace hopes soared over the weekend with the Irish Republican ArmyÕs decision to put its weaponry Òbeyond use.Ó

The IRA said that to help the stalled peace accord in the British province it would start a process that would Òcompletely and verifiably put IRA arms beyond use.Ó

It also resumed talks with a disarmament commission that is supervising the handing in of weapons by the British provinceÕs Protestant and Roman Catholic guerrilla groups.

The IRA has always rejected disarmament as equivalent to surrender. But the kind of disarmament now being offered would not require the IRA to hand over weapons publicly, only to identify the locations of its secret stockpiles.

The new agreement will allow two international obververs, Martti Ahtisaari of Finland and South African Cyril Ramaphosa to conduct unprecedented personal inspections of the arms dumps where rifles, rocket grenade launchers, explosives and even SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles are believed to be stored.

Former Finnish president Ahtisaari was nominated by Finland for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on Yugoslavia and the Kosovo conflict.

Ramaphosa, a lawyer, retired from politics after helping Nelson Mandela lead South Africa from apartheid to democracy. He accepted the Northern Ireland mission after consulting South African President Thabo Mbeki.

The observers will be briefed in the coming week and their first trip to Northern Ireland is expected to take place before the summer.

The deal has followed two years of secret low-key discussions between Canadian General John de Chastelain, who oversees the disarmament commission, and the IRA and their political allies, Sinn Fein, to seek a way to take the guns out of politics.

Known as the Òquiet manÓ of the peace process, de Chastelain has been the link to guerrilla groups since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, trying to persuade them to give up the weapons they used to sustain 30 years of sectarian violence in the British province in which 3,600 people died.

Sinn Fein argues that the terms of the Good Friday Agreement do not require IRA decommissioning. They merely establish decommissioning as an objective of the peace process as a whole

The breakthrough followed two days of talks in Belfast between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern to revive the accord which has been in limbo since the power-sharing government was suspended in February over the disarmament issue.

The two governments also said they would extend the deadline for total IRA disarmament from this May 22 to June 2001.
/ENDS
Sources: Reuters, JaneÕs, IISS