IRA to release April 13 peace pledges statement
The IRA has confirmed it will release the statement setting out peace pledges that it gave to the Irish and British governments last month.
With Tony Blair halting the Northern Ireland Assembly elections because he said republicans had not given clear assurances of an end to all violence, the provisionals vowed to reveal what they had put on the table.
Once rank-and-file activists had been briefed on its contents it will be made public, the paramilitary organisation disclosed in an announcement yesterday.
It said: “The IRA leadership has authorised the release of their statement that was given to the two governments on April 13.
“First and foremost the statement must be shown to all IRA volunteers.
“Upon completion of this process the statement will be released to the public.”
The peace process was plunged into new crisis when Mr Blair postponed the May 29 poll to the Stormont power-sharing assembly.
Despite two attempts by Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams to stress that the provisionals posed no threat to the Good Friday Agreement, Downing Street insisted it needed more guarantees that all paramilitary activity would end for good.
Specific vows to stop weapons purchasing, intelligence gathering, targeting and punishment attacks were not included in the proposals issued to London and Dublin by the IRA, he said.
With David Trimble’s Ulster Unionists refusing to go back into the devolved institutions brought down last October amid allegations of republican spying, the British Prime Minister put the elections on hold for a second time until the autumn.
Sinn Fein leaders and Ian Paisley’s anti-Agreement Democratic Unionists were both left seething by the postponement, claiming it had been stopped to save Mr Trimble from heavy losses.
The joint British-Irish declaration which was scheduled to form part of a deal with the IRA statement has now been published in a bid to put more pressure on the IRA.
Commitments to slash troop levels in Northern Ireland by nearly 10,000 to a permanent garrison of just 5,000, pull down military watchtowers in Belfast and south Armagh, and grant a virtual amnesty to on-the-run paramilitary prisoners are included in that document.
The package depends on the IRA keeping its side of the bargain, the British government has stressed.
Mr Adams has insisted republicans have bent over backwards to prove their commitment to peace, and accused the British government of casting Northern Ireland back to a situation similar to the Civil Rights movement at the start of the Troubles.
Elements within the establishment simply do not want Catholics to be in the Stormont Executive, the Sinn Fein leader claimed.
Republican anger is set to be vented tomorrow when thousands gather in Belfast and Derry for the annual hunger strikers commemoration rallies.
The IRA’s announcement followed an earlier call from Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy for the provisionals to issue a new statement before the elections.
Mr Murphy warned that the process could be thrown into fresh turmoil without a fresh declaration.
“We do need that because without it there is no question in my view that we will not be able to move in the way that we want to,” he warned.
“This goes back to October of last year when the Prime Minister, and indeed the Taoiseach as well, both said that we have come to this fork in the road, that we have to ensure there is an end now to paramilitarism and paramilitary activity.”
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