Wider Path Toward Peace in Ulster

Some call it a giant step forward, others say it’s just a gimmick. The truth is last week’s decision by the Irish Republican Army to open its weapons caches to outside inspectors indeed represents an important widening of the path toward peace in Northern Ireland.

Hidden depots were opened to former Finnish President Martii Ahtisaari and Cyril Ramaphosa, a member of South Africa’s National Congress. They told reporters they had seen a “substantial quantity of arms” and explosives and made a report to an independent panel on disarmament and the British and Irish governments. The sites of the depots were not revealed in the report but were on Irish soil.

The significance of the IRA action was that it disclosed a measurable number of arms that could be checked on subsequent visits to assure that none had been moved. And the fact that the IRA allowed outsiders to view arsenals for the first time since the movement’s founding 81 years ago provides a fundamental step in consolidating the Good Friday agreement, signed two years ago to find ways to build peace in the troubled British province.

Ahtisaari and Ramaphosa said that with the help of “independent specialists in the field of arms control” they have “ensured that the weapons and explosives cannot be used without our detection.” The report of the inspectors could not have come at a better time, the eve of the Protestants’ so-called “marching season.” Bold moves like these build substance in the Good Friday agreement.