IRA delay 'undermining peace process'
The IRA was put under renewed pressure today to hurry up and get on with its promised final decommissioning of all weapons.
With speculation mounting that the long-awaited act marking the ending of their terrorist activity will come this month, the SDLP deputy leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell said it was time they got on with it.
The Assembly member said lack of activity by the IRA since their pledge in July was giving loyalist paramilitaries the opportunity to undermine the peace process.
Dr McDonnell said: “A month has come and gone since the Provisional IRA statement. Since then, there has been a determined effort by extremists, particularly on the loyalist side, to undermine peace.”
He said there was a need to rebuild confidence as quickly as possible, and an onus of the IRA to do it – if only because of the enormous damage to confidence done by the Colombia Three.
Dr McDonnell added: “One month on from the IRA statement and 63 months on from the deadline for completing decommissioning in the (Good Friday) Agreement - the scrapping of IRA weapons is long overdue. It needs to happen now.”
To rebuild confidence people needed to know that “words will be honoured, promises will be delivered on, that standards will apply and, above all, that the judgement of governments will be honest”.
It has been reported that the IRA has begun moving its weapons to central dumps in the Republic ready to complete decommissioning within weeks.
Meanwhile, DUP, the Rev Ian Paisley reiterated his demands that the process is undertaken in an open manner.
“There must be full decommissioning, it must be transparent but the IRA say no photographs,” he said.
Speaking on RTE’s This Week programme, he said: “There must be the ending of criminality. And when I say the ending, the ending must be so the people on the street can say it’s gone. Those are reasonable things to say.
“Words are not enough. It must be transparent.”
