Arms Handover Will Not Happen Tue, 8 Feb 2000 02:48:09 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - "Sean MacCoinnigh" A Chairde: At times like this, many would tend to believe the one Irish=20 mainstream newspaper whose editorial policy is not dictated by an anti-republican imperative. The Business Post, natch. And what ever happened to Mountain Climber? Did the Whitehall/Glenngall junta have him thrown into a ravine? Seriously, does anyone out there even *remember* Mountain Climber and his officially unique position on disarmament as a booby trap deliberately planted to 'destroy' the peace movement? Don't all answer at once! Black Jack ARMS HANDOVER WILL NOT HAPPEN SUNDAY BUSINESS POST -- Feb 6, 2000 By Frank Connolly The dispute over IRA decommissioning may go to the courts in Belfast and Dublin following legal advice provided to Sinn Fein last week. Republicans have accused the British and Irish governments of defaulting on their commitments in the internationally binding Good Friday Agreement by planning to suspend the institutions later this week. Going to the High Court is, however, one of the milder options contemplated by republicans this weekend as they ponder the looming collapse of the carefully constructed political edifice which has seen two of their senior members, Martin McGuinness and Bairbre De Brun, serve as ministers in the new executive. An emotional Martin McGuinness said on Friday that the decision by Secretary of State Peter Mandelson to suspend the political institutions at the end of this week, just prior to the meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council on Saturday, was the worst day in 100 years of Irish history. Overstated perhaps, but nothing to match the hyperbole that has dominated media coverage of a crisis that threatens, as Tony Blair warned in the House of Commons earlier last week, to plunge people on both islands into a conflict most had thought consigned to history. As the government, led by Bertie Ahern and his new Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, successfully delayed the suspension of the executive, the North-South Council and the other institutions finally put in place less than ten weeks ago, the consensus in political and media circles in Dublin and London was that only a gesture by the IRA could avert a meltdown. Differences between the government were played down after Ahern's meeting with Blair on Friday in Cornwall. Blair and Mandelson, however, were determined to suspend the institutions to ensure David Trimble's survival as First Minister and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. Although the decision to suspend was held back for a week in deference to Irish appeals, it will be implemented before the UUC meeting on Saturday. Indeed, the decision to announce the suspension rather than issue another holding statement came as some surprise to Irish officials who had assured the Sinn Fein leadership earlier on Friday that there would be no pre-emptory move on the British part. Despite this apparent rift, the two governments were singing from the same hymn-sheet when it came to finding a way to resolve the crisis. Only the republicans, the IRA in particular, could save the Good Friday Agreement by making a commitment on the decommissioning of arms. Specifically, they wanted a clear promise that decommissioning would begin before May and would be completed, in line with the aspiration in the agreement, by May 22, 2000. A fired-up media responded with gusto on Friday, with the Irish and British press claiming that the IRA had been given a week to prevent the suspension of the institutions. The problem with the deadlines is that, for republicans, they are unattainable. Decommissioning by next Friday, as demanded by Trimble and the UUP, is simply not going to happen. Furthermore, the threatened collapse of the institutions, for that is the way it is understood by most republicans and many nationalists on the island, will make any decommissioning impossible by May. No decommissioning, no executive, according to the UUP. No executive or North-South Council, no decommissioning, says Sinn Fein. While Ahern may have extracted a commitment from Blair that at least the north-south implementation bodies can continue, and north-south cooperation through the Intergovernmental Council will be maintained in return for going along with the suspension of the executive, it is unlikely that republicans will respond positively to developments. And for the peace process to work, as the governments have discovered in recent years, Sinn Fe=A8in and the IRA must be on board. To seek to enforce a deadline on the IRA is simply unworkable, however desirable on the part of the two governments. It has never worked before and is unlikely to work in the future. "For Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair to be confronting republicans when the problem is unionism is not going down well. They have been confronting republicans for 30 years and if anyone thinks for one minute that the IRA, which is undefeated and fought the British to a standstill, is going to suddenly bend over because David Trimble is throwing a tantrum, they are deluded," said one particularly angry republican leader. What the IRA leadership offered last week has been dismissed as unimportant despite a statement that it presents no threat to the peace process, that its guns are silent and that the IRA wants a permanent peace. Explaining that its representative had met the de Chastelain commission on three occasions since December in an effort to move the situation out of a political vacuum, the statement added: "Our representative stressed that we are totally committed to the peace process, that the IRA wants a permanent peace, that the declaration and maintenance of the cessation, which is now entering its fifth year, is evidence of that, that the IRA's guns are silent and that there is no threat to the peace process from the IRA." Judging by the reaction to the statement, it fell on largely deaf ears. Unsurprisingly Trimble and Co continued to demand `product' by their own self-imposed deadline of Friday last when Trimble's letter of resignation was due to come into effect if practical decommissioning of IRA weapons and explosives had not taken place and been verified by the Independent International Commissioning on Decommissioning (IICD). Dublin sought commitments from Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness that there would be decommissioning before May and that the IRA's arsenal would be put "beyond use" by May 22, the only date mentioned in the Good Friday Agreement. The British government wanted at least commitment on a timetable for decommissioning if it was to avert this week's drastic action. Even such a commitment, difficult as it is to obtain, may not be enough for the unionists who appear determined to go to the wire on their demand for decommissioning by next weekend. There are a number of reasons why this demand cannot be met and they are well known to the major players: the government leaders in Dublin, London, and Washington; and the party officers in Glengall St. Contrary to claims that undertakings were given to Trimble and Reg Empey during the Mitchell review in December that there would be actual decommissioning by the end of January, republicans insist that Adams and McGuinness actually stated that no such guarantees could be given. Indeed Trimble, whose Nobel peace prize speech in Oslo contained references to unionist preferences for precision of language, agrees that no formal guarantees were given by the Sinn Fein leaders. "In the discussions, Gerry and Martin said that they would use their good offices to influence the IRA. They said they were totally committed to the objective of decommissioning. But they also said they could not put a time limit on it and could not guarantee decommissioning by February or by May for that matter. Blair, Clinton and Bertie Ahern are all aware of that," the senior republican source said. "We signed the Good Friday Agreement with the impression that we had two years to create the conditions for decommissioning to happen. "Now the Ulster Unionists want it to happen within eight weeks of the institutions, which they delayed for 19 months, being set up. It is simply not going to happen." The senior source added that the May 22 date is not a deadline for republicans and that Trimble himself has conceded that the decommissioning section of the Agreement is aspirational. Further, if Sinn Fein, or the IRA leadership, was to seek to deliver partial or total decommissioning by May, it could not succeed without meeting large scale opposition from a hostile IRA convention. "It would take a convention for even a gesture to be taken. No small group of individuals, even if they thought they could do it under [IRA] army rules, would risk trying to take such a step without a full convention. At present no convention would agree to even partial decommissioning. Whatever chance of a convention agreeing to decommissioning by May, they are non-existent unless the institutions agreed under the terms of the agreement are in full swing," the source added. While senior government sources are aware of these arguments, they continue to press Sinn Fein that, on political and moral grounds, decommissioning by May as envisaged in the agreement should be delivered. Without it the republican objective of achieving a united Ireland, which requires the consent of a large body of unionists, cannot be achieved, while the shorter-term aim of joining in a government in Dublin would be impossible. They are arguments that do not go unheard by the Sinn Fein leadership. But they have a constituency to deliver to, including one where British army installations and troops are an unwelcome part of the everyday landscape. For the grassroots that hold the republican movement together, there will be no move to decommission until the British military and police presence is removed. Until then they are happy to hold the peace if others hold to their political commitments. For Adams and his colleagues the problem they have is that a British government, which has listened sympathetically to republicans since coming to power in 1996, has now promised to suspend the institutions set up under the Agreement in order to save Trimble's political neck. In an angry outburst on Friday, Adams called Mandelson "a disgrace" over his comments in the House of Commons a day previously. The war of words may go to the courts. It is anyone's guess where it will go after that. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-02.08.00-02:48:11-7134