Britain, Sinn Fein Expected to Open Talks Soon on Disarming IRA

Negotiations about disarming the Irish Republican Army will begin soon, Britain announced Monday, breaking months of deadlock in the search for a Northern Ireland settlement.

The announcement indicated a meeting was imminent between the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party and Michael Ancram, the second-ranking official in Britain’s Northern Ireland Office.

It would be the first ministerial-level meeting between Britain and Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, which helped engineer the nationalist paramilitary group’s Sept. 1 cease-fire.

The breakthrough followed several weeks of contacts between Britain’s senior civil servant in Northern Ireland, Quentin Thomas, and Sinn Fein deputy leader Martin McGuinness.

Sinn Fein said it offered Britain no firm promise to “decommission” IRA weaponry. Decommissioning means the surrender or destruction of guns, bullets, explosives and weapons-making equipment, most of which the IRA has hidden south of the border in Ireland.

Although Northern Ireland’s fragile peace is intact, political momentum involving Britain and Sinn Fein has become bogged down since September, when the IRA declared the truce in its 25-year-old war against British rule.