Catholic Leader Calls for IRA Disarmament

The senior Catholic in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing Cabinet on Friday implored the Irish Republican Army to begin disarming or risk undoing the fledgling administration.

Seamus Mallon, deputy first minister in the Protestant-Roman Catholic administration that took power last month under terms of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, warned that an imminent report by a disarmament commission could shatter the trust that enabled the formation of a government.

Mallon predicted that the Cabinet could collapse if the commission reports Monday that it has made little or no progress in its secret negotiations with IRA leaders.

The IRA was not a party to the 1998 accord, which called for the outlawed organization to disarm fully by May--though it specified no starting point.

Two months ago, the province’s major British Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, agreed to drop its demand for some IRA disarmament before the Cabinet’s formation--but only if the IRA began “decommissioning” in response.

For more than a year, the issue had deadlocked efforts to form the four-party Cabinet that includes Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing.

Mallon, deputy leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, said the IRA has no excuse for retaining its arsenal now that Sinn Fein has a share of power.

He said the republican movement--Sinn Fein and the IRA--”cannot continue forever to hedge its bets, to claim the benefits of the ballot box while . . . denying the imperative to decommission.”

As part of a deal brokered in November, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble agreed to persuade party members to accept Sinn Fein as a part of government.

Trimble said he would withdraw his party if the IRA failed to begin disarming before the Ulster Unionists’ Feb. 12 meeting.