‘It is a statement 30 years too late’

“HOW can they say to wee Paddy, on the border with his AK47, who has spent 27 years shooting at soldiers and pickers (police): ‘Give us your AK47, you don’t need it any more’?” was the cynical reaction of UDA brigadier Jackie McDonald in his office in a prisoners’ drop-in centre at the heart of the Protestant Sandy Row in south Belfast.

"How do they say to the real hardliners, 'we are getting what we set out to get'. The Green Book (the IRA constitution) said they would never give up an ounce of Semtex or a bullet until we achieve a united Ireland."

Mr McDonald, who served half of a 10-year sentence for extortion, said there must be a hidden motive for the Provisionals' ground-breaking declaration. Reading the full statement for the first time, he forecast the loyalist community would be troubled by the hidden diplomacy which preceded it.