IRA Pledges to Allow Inspections of Weapons Depots

In a stunning bid to rescue the Northern Ireland peace process, the Irish Republican Army vowed Saturday to put its weapons “completely and verifiably” out of commission and to allow regular independent inspections of its arms depots.

The IRA statement followed an offer by the British and Irish governments to reconvene the province’s suspended power-sharing government May 22 in exchange for a clear statement from the paramilitary group renouncing violence.

Under the deal that the two governments hammered out with leaders of Northern Ireland’s political parties over the last few weeks, the inspection of IRA weapons dumps will be overseen by two foreign diplomats, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, a veteran of Yugoslav peace negotiations, and former African National Congress Secretary-General Cyril Ramaphosa.

The new deadline for total disarmament, meanwhile, has in effect been pushed back a year, to June 2001.

The IRA’s decision to open its buried caches for inspection goes far beyond anything the group has offered in the past.

“This is a life-and-death, blood-and-sinew, emotional, painful step for the IRA to make--because it wants this to work,” said Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing.

Still, the move falls short of demands from Northern Ireland’s largest Protestant party that the IRA start disarming and declare the decades-long conflict in the British province over.

Ulster Unionist Party chief David Trimble, first minister of the suspended government in Belfast, the provincial capital, said the statement is “positive” and “does appear to break new ground,” but it remained to be seen whether he can sell it to his critically divided party.

Trimble barely survived an attempt by hard-liners to oust him as party leader in March, and this would appear to be his last chance to save his position as well as the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

The issue of IRA disarmament has been the central stumbling block in the peace process since its inception. The province’s pro-British Protestant majority wants ironclad guarantees that Roman Catholics will never again take up arms in their struggle for a united Ireland, while the IRA and its supporters have insisted that a weapons hand-over would be tantamount to surrendering after a war they did not lose.

The IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, joined the Ulster Unionists and other parties in the landmark power-sharing government in December, but Britain suspended that arrangement in February after unionists threatened to walk out over the IRA’s refusal to put guns on the table.

The breakdown infuriated the IRA, which responded by pulling out of talks with an international disarmament commission.

But months of quiet negotiations appear to have paid off with the new IRA statement.

“The IRA leadership will initiate a process that will completely and verifiably put IRA arms beyond use. We will do it in such a way as to avoid risk to the public and misappropriation by others and ensure maximum public confidence,” it said.

While refusing to give up its guns to Protestants, the IRA also wants to make sure that none of its weapons fall into the hands of its own splinter groups opposed to the peace process.

“The contents of a number of our arms dumps will be inspected by agreed third parties who will report that they have done so to the [disarmament commission]. The dumps will be reinspected regularly to ensure that the weapons have remained secure,” it said.

In Washington, President Clinton welcomed the IRA’s commitment and said he believed it was the start of the permanent removal of guns from Northern Ireland politics.

“These developments offer renewed hope to the people of Northern Ireland that politics will once and for all be pursued through exclusively political means,” Clinton said in a statement.

Under the Good Friday accord, the guns were supposed to have been gone from politics by May 22--the date paramilitary disarmament was to have been completed. And until this weekend, it seemed that May 22 would come and go like so many other failed deadlines in the peace process.

In a letter Saturday to Northern Ireland’s main political parties, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, spelled out other elements of the deal to get the peace process back on track. They also set a new goal of June 2001 for implementation of a range of measures in the province, including disarmament, a reduced level of British security, a revamped policing service and new human rights provisions.

“The British government will progressively take all the necessary steps to secure as early a return as possible to normal security arrangements in Northern Ireland, consistent with the level of threat,” the two leaders said.

For the IRA and its supporters, an impartial police service with more Catholic officers and the withdrawal of British troops are key issues. They particularly want patrols and army outposts removed from the counties along the border with the Irish Republic, which still look like a war zone.

Sinn Fein leaders urged unionists Saturday to recognize the leap that the IRA had made in its statement.

“There will be difficult times for republicans,” said the group’s Bairbre de Brun, who is health minister in the suspended government. “The IRA is clearly stretching themselves in order to get the institutions in place and see the Good Friday agreement implemented.”

But Trimble’s opponents within his own party were quick to dismiss the statement as a retread.

“The IRA statement is not disarmament and not decommissioning. It should not lead to any change in Ulster Unionist Party policy,” said Jeffrey Donaldson, a unionist member of the British Parliament. “We should not go back into government when not one single bullet has been handed in.”

Trimble was careful in his response, saying: “There are some quite positive elements in it. . . . There are points that we want to tease out the meaning of.”

He will have to secure the support of his party council if he is going to return to government with Sinn Fein on May 22--and that vote is likely to be hairsplittingly close.

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Times staff writer Richard A. Serrano in Washington and special correspondent William Graham in Belfast contributed to this report.

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Northern Ireland Plan

As part of the successful diplomacy that achieved an IRA promise to disarm, the British and Irish governments Saturday spelled out new goals and commitments in a letter to the Northern Ireland parties.

2000

* May 22: Power-sharing government to be restored to a local four-party coalition in Northern Ireland. The coalition was suspended in February. Whether it can be restarted will depend on backing from the province’s major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists. Soon after the transfer of powers, the Irish Republican Army would begin providing the locations of its weapons dumps to international inspectors.

* July 28: The last imprisoned members of the IRA and outlawed pro-British groups to be paroled, completing a process that began in September 1998. Whether this will happen depends on the groups’ cease-fires holding.

* September: Britain to enact a charter promoting minority languages, specifically Irish Gaelic in Northern Ireland. Irish-language television and radio services to be promoted.

* October: British government to publish its plans to reform Northern Ireland’s criminal justice system. Also, British and Irish governments to pass legislation incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into their national law.

* November: Britain to pass legislation reforming Northern Ireland’s predominantly Protestant police force. The Royal Ulster Constabulary to be renamed the more neutral-sounding Police Service for Northern Ireland.

2001

* January: A new 20-member civilian Policing Board to be appointed to oversee police reform. The board to include two members from the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party.

* April: Recruitment of police officers in the province to begin on a 50-50 Catholic-Protestant basis. Goal is 30% Catholic representation by 2011.

* June: The IRA and major outlawed pro-British groups, the Ulster Defense Assn. and Ulster Volunteer Force, to completely disarm in cooperation with international inspectors.

Source: Associated Press