Friday, 11 February, 2000
Sunday, 6 February, 2000
Sunday, 2/6 February, 2000
Thursday, 3 February, 2000
Sunday, 30 January, 2000
London Reimposes Direct Rule, Suspends North' s Institutions
Within hours of a major move by the IRA on arms, Britain's Northern Secretary, Peter Mandelson, has suspended the North's devolved government and has called for a second review of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams, has said this evening's decision to suspend's the North's new political institutions represented "a missed opportunity" and accused Mandelson, of "caving in" to an Ulster Unionist threat to pull down the institutions.
In the hours before Mandelson's announcement, Sinn Fein secured a new and significant proposition to resolve the arms issue in front of the British and Irish governments. In what was described as a major breakthrough, Gerry Adams said the IRA had set out the context in which it would deal with the issue of arms. Mr Adams urged the UUP leader, David Trimble to join with him and the two governments and the other pro-agreements in moving speedily to re-building public confidence and re-energising the political institutions.
Mr Adams said his party's proposal - made in a statement this evening - to resolve the arms issue had led to a positive report from the decommissioning body, headed by General John de Chastelain. In a late development, Mandelson confirmed the second de Chastelain report was in his office, but that he had not yet had time to read it.
An earlier report by the decommissioning body -- dated January 31st -- was this afternoon leaked to the BBC, apparently by British officials. It explicitly confirmed the conclusion of the last review, facilitated by US Senator George Mitchell, that there existed a basis for decommissioning to begin. The report said that while significant progress had been made on the issue with the IRA's appointed representative, it could not confirm a date for a start to actual decommissioning. Contacts with loyalist paramilitaries indicated that those organisations would not decommission before the IRA.
The former Minister for Education, Sinn Fein Chief Negotiator Martin McGuinness, said the British suspension was "very damaging" and that his party was "bitterly disappointed". He said Mr Mandelson had effectively "decommissioned the institutions the people voted for" and had made a resolution of the crisis harder to achieve.
McGuinness poined out that Mandelson's predicted move had come despite a major breakthrough on arms with the IRA, which he said was reflected in the new report by the de Chastelain arms commission. He challenged the British government to release this report.
With no clear future in sight for peace efforts, McGuinness accused Mandelson of doing "a grave disservice" to the people of Ireland. The grim-faced MP warned there would now be "a tremendous loss of faith" in the political process by Irish nationalists.
Bomb explodes amid mounting tension
Republican dissidents have exploded a bomb at a hotel in County Fermanagh in an attempt to further destabilise the peace process.
The bomb exploded at Mahon's Hotel in Irvinestown, County Fermanagh tonight after a warning to radio stations from a caller who said he was from the Continuity IRA, a republican guerrilla splinter group.
The building had been evacuated and there were no reports of casualties. A second hotel, the Manor House Hotel, at Killydeas, outside Enniskillen was also evacuated after the warning.
In early reaction to the attack, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness said he unequivocally condemned the bombing.
The incident has highlight the dramatic deterioration in the peace process in the past week. The British government is set to suspend an eight-week-old power-sharing administration by Friday at the insistence of Ulster Unionists, who are seeking an immediate IRA weapons handover.
British policy is being driven by an effective blackmail threat from Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who has said he will resign and bring down the Good Friday Agreement unless the new political institutions are suspended and a second review of the Agreement is held on the subject of IRA arms.
Such an action would likely be in breach of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (and the corresponding international treaty), and Sinn Fein today said it would consider legal action to oppose it. Assembly member Alex Maskey said: "We have taken a view that there is likely to be a breach of the agreement here in terms of the British government's decision to suspend these institutions.
"The institutions were established under the terms of the agreement so there are legal and constitutional questions in our mind and we have sought legal advice."
This evening, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams revealed that his party may not take part in any second review. Pointing to the difficulty encountered in persuading the Sinn Fein leadership to take part in the first review after 18 months of unionist stalling tactics, he said his party had succesfully negotiated the decommissioning issue in the November talks under US Senator George Mitchell.
"Our party will have to think long and hard before taking part in what could be a sham," he told Irish television.
At the eleventh hour - The peace process is sick, but not yet dead
The Guardian
Once again Northern Ireland is the land of the irresistible force and the immovable object. On one side are the unionists, lodging a demand that is fair and legitimate. Standing against them are republicans, who cannot for fair and legitimate reasons meet that demand. The deadlock continues: the unionists want the IRA to give up its guns, but the IRA refuses.
For David Trimble and his men, the logic is impeccable. The republicans have taken, taken, taken from the peace process - now it is time to give. Their prisoners have been released, their politicians elevated to ministerial rank in the new devolved government of Northern Ireland and, most recently, their demands met, with London's acceptance of Chris Patten's reforms of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. They have won much, say the Unionists. Now they must pay the price - in guns and bullets.
What is more, runs this indictment, republicans clearly understood they would have to yield arms by now. Never mind that the actual text of the Good Friday Agreement speaks of May 2000 as the final deadline, it was clear during the gruelling negotiations chaired by the former US senator George Mitchell last autumn that something would have to give before then. Indeed, David Trimble staked everything on his belief that decommissioning was around the corner, even offering his resignation to a sceptical Ulster unionist council if the IRA failed to deliver. It was that promise which persuaded the council to shelve its doubts: if it had not, today's Northern Ireland executive would never have materialised.
All that amounts to a moral weight on republicanism to budge. The nationalist press in Ireland is clear on this matter. The Irish Times demands an end to "the fascist stance" which allows republicans to keep both political and paramilitary options open. The same paper reports that 86% of people in the Republic want decommissioning right now. The pressure is intense indeed: even republicanism's friends now demand at least symbolic movement. And yet symbolism is precisely the problem, just as it has always been. The IRA can countenance disarmament on its own timetable, the one so carefully crocheted together in the Good Friday agreement. The moment that timeline shifts, away from the terms brokered by Mr Mitchell and to ones of unionism's choosing, then disarmament becomes a different kind of action: one that symbolises surrender. That is why Mr Trimble's February deadline, no matter how politically essential, was also so fateful: for it turned a deal, which is acceptable, into a demand, which is not.
So what now? It would be tempting to send for senator George, but that would be a mistake. His patience is surely exhausted and besides, Northern Ireland has to get used to solving its own problems. A gesture from the IRA, a bullet or two, would certainly save everyone a lot of trouble. But the most realistic hope might be not to suspend or park the peace process, but to keep the engine running - to keep the executive in place, if only symbolically. To do otherwise, would be to undo too much valuable work. If the new machinery can be kept in place until May, the arms problem may well find a solution. For that is the true deadline: if the IRA do not disarm by then, they will be utterly discredited and alone. So we urge the politicians of London, Dublin and Belfast to redouble their search in the time that remains for a creative compromise which can hold them, in limbo if necessary, until May. Let the Good Friday agreement run its course. After 30 years, a few months more cannot be too long to wait.
Copyright © 2000 Guardian Media Group plc.
Decommissioning: British Army start?!
Today, Sunday the 30th. of January 2000 and 28 years after the massacre of Bloody Sunday in Derry, the people of Derry are once again confronted with a criminal cover-up organised by the Ministry of Defence in London (MoD). For 28 years the weapons used by the British army on the 30th of January 1972 were stored away as criminal evidence.
Today news was published in the Irish Times that the British army began a version of 'decommissioning' recently which can only deserve being named as a criminal and synical act in view of the fact that a new investigation is due to start in the near future, after decades of agitation. During the last few weeks the Ministry of Defence ordered that 13 rifles fired by soldiers on Bloody Sunday be destroyed.
See here for story (link to the Irish Times)
Decommissioning: The legal weapons
Legal arms have escaped decommissioning argument
By Anne Cadwallader, Ireland on Sunday
In the sustained debate over paramilitary arsenals that has raged in the North, virtually since the first IRA ceasefire was called in 1994, the issue of legally-held weapons has barely broken the surface.
See here for story (link to Ireland on Sunday)
For our German language readers see our translation:
Die Frage der Waffen in Nordirland
Übersetzung eines Textes des Pat Finucane Center, 1995