N. Ireland loyalists lay down arms

Northern Ireland’s largest loyalist paramilitary force announced Sunday that it will put its weapons aside, another step toward ending the low-level violence that besets the region despite the election of a power-sharing government this year.

In a statement timed to coincide with a holiday commemorating war victims across Britain, the Ulster Defense Assn., or UDA, said its military wing would stand down and put its weapons out of reach.

The Ulster Volunteer Force made a similar move in May. Neither loyalist group went as far as the Irish Republican Army, which handed in its weapons and authorized its political wing to join erstwhile Protestant adversaries in the new government.

The once-powerful UDA was responsible for scores of shootings, bombings and other attacks aimed mainly at Roman Catholics, advocates of a united Ireland and Protestant opponents during the 1970s and 1980s.

It had as many as 40,000 members during the height of the Troubles, but in recent years the figure has dwindled to about 2,000 to 3,000. Its arsenal is believed to include firearms, rocket launchers, grenades and small quantities of explosives.

Declaring that “the war is over,” the paramilitary group said its weapons would be “put beyond use,” though not formally decommissioned until there is more “trust” in a permanent end to violence.

“We are now in a new democratic dispensation that will lead to permanent political stability, but we believe the political parties and the political institutions are themselves still in a period of transition,” the UDA said in a statement read at a parade in Belfast, the provincial capital.

“The organization intends to continue through a process of transformation that will ultimately achieve a Northern Ireland based on equality, justice and inclusivity, where no sections of our people are left behind regardless of religion, politics or identity,” it said.

The IRA’s decision to decommission weapons allowed it to join the new government in May alongside loyalist advocates of union with Britain. That political settlement has ended most of the violence that for decades accompanied the issue of whether Northern Ireland would remain part of Britain or be united with the Republic of Ireland.

But dissident anti-British republicans continue to mount occasional attacks, and on the other side, loyalist paramilitaries, primarily the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force, have engaged in vicious internal warfare, drug dealing, extortion, loan sharking and the sale of counterfeit goods, according to the Independent Monitoring Commission, a group set up to help disarm the region.

In its latest report this month, the commission said UDA members were involved in the shooting of a police officer during factional fighting in July; the fire-bombing of a home occupied by Polish nationals in June; and rioting in Bangor near Belfast in August, during which gasoline bombs, fireworks and some live rounds of ammunition were fired at police.

At the same time, the commission found, the UDA leadership has displayed “a genuine desire to make progress” and has expelled some members found to be engaged in criminal activity.

A turning point in the effort to get loyalist paramilitaries to disarm was the decision last month by Northern Ireland Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie to halt $2.4 million in government funding to help paramilitaries in socially disadvantaged communities make the transition to peaceful civilian lives.

“The cycle of community involvement equating to paramilitary involvement will have to be broken once and for all,” she said. “I can’t stand over programs aimed at quickening the pace of decommissioning and reducing paramilitary activity when those same paramilitaries are prepared to flaunt their criminality in the face of the police and the rest of our community.”

The British government’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Shaun Woodward, called Sunday’s UDA announcement a “significant move” that acknowledges that “the war is over.”

“It is essential that the commitments they have given today, those of an end to violence and criminality, are implemented on the ground,” he said. “They will be judged by their actions, not their words.”

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kim.murphy@latimes.com