IF he had called off his hunger strike, Bobby Sands would be 54 and still, very possibly, the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

A senior Sinn Fein member says rank and file IRA men would not have agreed to disarmament if the decision had been left to them.

As Gerry Adams admitted in London today, republicans will agonise long and hard over the IRA decommissioning. They will feel real, emotional pain.