Doubts over ‘totality’ of decommissioning
IT is impossible to say conclusively whether all weapons held by the IRA, UVF and other terror groups have been put beyond use, the body responsible for decommissioning has admitted.
In 2005, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) said that it was satisfied that the “totality” of the IRA’s arsenal had been destroyed.
That statement, at a critical political juncture where – for the first time – a majority of unionism had swung behind the DUP, made it possible for Ian Paisley to enter government with Sinn Fein.
But, in the IICD’s final report, the body says that representatives of the terror groups which engaged with it — the IRA, UVF, LVF, UDA, INLA and Official IRA — told it that they could not be certain that all arms had been decommissioned.
“Given the uncertain nature, or the absence of estimated arms holdings, when a paramilitary group declared it had completed decommissioning we asked its representative to confirm whether the arms decommissioned constituted its complete inventory,” it said.
“While each of the paramilitary groups we dealt with (the LVF excepted), confirmed that the arms they decommissioned constituted the totality of the arms under the leadership’s control, none was able to confirm definitively that all of its arms had been decommissioned for the reasons listed in paragraph 25 above.”
The paragraph referred to gave a series of reasons for the difficulties in establishing whether all weapons were destroyed, including the death of paramilitaries in charge of weapons dumps, fading memories of where weapons were hidden, splits in terror groups with individuals taking arms with them and a lack of records over the quantities of munitions which had been used.
Therefore, the commission said that it was unable to “declare definitively that decommissioning has been totally completed by those groups”.
And, in lessons which the IICD said should be learned from its work, the report said: “We believe it is not helpful to demand an opponent admit to wrongdoing.”
Ulster Unionist leader Tom Elliott said that the admission some arms may remain in paramilitary hands was concerning.
“The recent use of weaponry, including semtex, by so-called dissident republicans raises very serious questions as to where this weaponry has come from and whether or not it is IRA weaponry which was supposed to have been decommissioned,” he said.
“The use of firearms by both loyalists and republicans during rioting in east Belfast last week also raises questions as to whether these were old stocks or fresh supplies.”
And, echoing the comments of first minister Peter Robinson, the UUP leader said that the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) had no justification for giving lists of arms destroyed to the US State Department but not the British and Irish governments. He said it was inexplicable that the inventories had been handed to a foreign government, rather than the British and Irish governments which funded the commission.
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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