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Protestant hardliners reject IRA disarmament

Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley, second right, accompanied by aides arrives for a meeting with General John de Chastelain of the International Decommissioning Body on Irish Republican Army (IRA), in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, yesterday. The DUP has refused to accept that the IRA has given up its entire arsenal of weapons. PHOTO: AP

Protestant politicians have rejected the Irish Republican Army's (IRA) mammoth act of disarmament as inadequate, and forecast yesterday they would not form a power-sharing government with the IRA's Sinn Fein for years -- if ever.

A day after weapons inspectors announced they had overseen the IRA's full disarmament following eight years of effort, the Reverend Ian Paisley led his deeply skeptical Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) into talks with the disarmament chief, retired Canadian General John de Chastelain.

At stake is the central dream of Northern Ireland's Good Friday peace accord of 1998 -- a stable Catholic-Protestant administration. One coalition led by a moderate Protestant fell apart in 2002 after the IRA stuck to its guns. Today's ascendant Protestant hardliners have emphasized they would not revive power-sharing until the IRA disbanded.

DUP lawmaker David Simpson said Protestants suspected the IRA had kept weapons in reserve, including more than 100 handguns that the IRA smuggled from Florida in 1999 and 2000.

Simpson said de Chastelain and his American and Finnish deputies were "taking the word of the IRA that everything has been given to them. We don't believe that."

He said international pressure couldn't force the Democratic Unionists, who represent most of the province's British Protestant majority, to cooperate with Sinn Fein, the major Irish Catholic-backed party.

"Over the next week, fortnight and months, the pressure will come on the Democratic Unionist Party to set up some sham of a government with Sinn Fein-IRA. My party will not make that mistake," he said.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Protestants were effectively calling the weapons inspectors liars.

Adams said disarmament officials "have said that the gear that they put away matched the estimates that the intelligence agencies of both [British and Irish] governments provided."

"So we can mess about over all of this, there can be genuine concerns, and people need some time to absorb it," Adams said. "But at the end of the day, are they saying that de Chastelain and the other commissioners are liars?"

Former US senator George Mitchell, who oversaw 22 months of Belfast negotiations that forged the Good Friday pact, said it was regrettable the IRA had not permitted details of its disarmament to be revealed, nor any photographs published, a key Protestant demand.

But he appealed to Protestants to trust the judgment and wisdom of de Chastelain, who served as his deputy during the negotiations.

Britain's minister responsible for governing Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, said the massive scale of the IRA move had yet to sink in.

"There have been lots of promises by the IRA in the past, including [weapons] decommissioning events, but on a much smaller and more limited scale than this one ... This is different," Hain said.
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