AT LAST!

by RAY FLEMING
YESTERDAY'S announcement by General John de Chastelain that the IRA has put all its weapons beyond use marks an historic and perhaps decisive stage in the Northern Ireland peace process. The Canadian general who has been in charge of the slow-moving decommissioning process said that he and the two churchmen, a Catholic and a Protestant, who participated in the verification were satisfied that the arms taken out of use “represented the totality of the IRA's arsenal”. Predictably the Rev Ian Paisley who leads the Protestant majority in the Northern Ireland Assembly, was sceptical and dismissive saying that the announcement illustrated more than ever “the duplicity and dishonesty” of the British and Irish governments and the IRA. This was a typical knee-jerk reaction from Mr Paisley and it was perhaps a more hopeful sign that his deputy Peter Robinson said he accepted that a significant amount of IRA weapons had been put beyond use. At a press conference General Chastelain and his clergymen were closely questioned on whether they knew the whole picture. They explained that their estimate of the number of weapons held by the IRA was based on information from British and Irish security forces and that the numbers they had observed being decommissioned were consistent with that estimate. It is inevitable that some doubts will linger. The IRA is a highly secretive organisation and it is theoretically possible that it has still not been completely open. But to what purpose? For Irish republicanism the political path is now much more promising than that of violence. There remain on both Catholic and Protestant sides the very real problem of the para-militaries but their objectives are generally more criminal than political. An historic moment, without question. How soon it leads to peaceful power-sharing betwen the communities depends now to a large extent on the willingness of the Protestants, and of Mr Paisley in particular, to sit down with the elected Sinn Fein representatives and get on with the business of government; there is no reason why they should not. In the meantime yesterday's important development should not pass without paying tribute to the key players of the past decade: John Major, Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, David Trimble, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, and also Bill Clinton.