Paisley spells out decommissioning terms
Photographic evidence of IRA disarmament must take people through the entire process, Ian Paisley insisted today.
As the British and Irish governments prepared to resume efforts to nail down a deal which could bring back Northern Ireland’s Assembly, the Democratic Unionist leader spelt out his terms for future weapons decommissioning.
He said in a radio interview broadcast in Northern Ireland that previous IRA decommissioning had been a charade.
“If we hadn’t three charades of so-called decommissioning, we wouldn’t have to be as strong on this matter,” the North Antrim MP said.
“We must first of all have an independent observer and that independent observer must be free to do what he likes as far as having a notebook, as far having his own inventory, as far as saying what time so many arms were destroyed.
“He must be absolutely free but, of course, that has never been agreed by the IRA. Then he must be able to have photographs taken by the (disarmament) commission, not by the IRA, on every step taken for the destruction of those arms – photographs before they were destroyed, photographs when they are destroying and photographs of after they’re destroyed.”
Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s bid to revive devolution stumbled last week over the issue of how IRA disarmament would be carried out.
The two leaders revealed their formula envisaged photographs being taken of the destruction of all the IRA’s weapons and two clergymen witnessing the act.
The IRA said while it had no difficulty with Protestant and Catholic church witnesses, Mr Paisley’s demand for photographs of weapons decommissioning was never possible.
After talks with the head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, General John de Chastelain, Mr Paisley accused the IRA of not even agreeing an inventory of all its weapons or indicating whether the independent witnesses would be free to describe what happened.
The DUP leader said initially his party wanted video evidence of decommissioning. The idea of photographs featured in the two governments’ blueprint for a deal, he said.
The 78-year-old also denied one photograph of a decommissioning event was good enough and he dismissed claims his party was seeking to humiliate the IRA by demanding visual evidence.
