THE Irish and British Governments yesterday powerfully backed the international decommissioning body’s determination that the IRA has fully destroyed its vast arsenal of weapons, describing it as a landmark shift of deep historical significance.

It would appear that Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness may not have done the IRA’s final act of decommissioning justice in heralding it as merely “historic”.

FOR three weeks in September, General John de Chastelain and his two colleagues on the international decommissioning body were driven around in a van with blacked-out windows to secret places where vast quantities of IRA arms awaited them.