‘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.

He said: "They (republicans) must believe we are within touching distance of a united Ireland. You can't blame the unionist and loyalist community. They have to treat this with great suspicion."

Mr McDonald predicted moves towards a united Ireland would have the potential to plunge the North into a new era of violence.

He said: "If there was any plan in the next number of years for it to happen, to bring about a united Ireland, loyalism and unionism would rebel against it.

"We would become what the IRA were. We would have to fight against it any way we could."

Despite the statement, Mr McDonald does not believe the IRA will abandon its arms. "As a loyalist, what the IRA does with weapons decommissioning does not bother me because I know they will still have enough manpower left to deal with any situation.

"The hawks (in the IRA) would not have it any other way. The most important thing is that the weapons are not being used."

The former prisoner said some weapons would have to be detained for the Provisionals to defend their communities from drug gangs. But he called for the statement to be viewed as a starting point.

"We have to improve things for our young people so they don't fall into the same traps as we fell into."

IT tutor Jim Watt, 53, also works at the Prisoners Enterprise Project.

Mr Watt said the local community has been left incensed this week by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments comparing al-Qaida to the IRA and the release of Shankill bomber Sean Kelly.

"Tony Blair said the IRA never killed 3,000 people but if they got 1,000 police officers in the one place they would have killed them."

On the statement, he said: "The unionist and Protestant people are being truly betrayed. In one sense it would be great to see disarmament, but at what price? They have not been slaughtering Protestants for 30 years just to say: 'We will give up and go.'"

Across the road lined with red, white and blue painted kerbstones the owner of the Carpet Centre has more reasons than most to despise the IRA.

The Provisionals killed two of Robert Smith's cousins and claimed the lives of six of his friends.

On the motives behind yesterday's statement, Mr Smith, 44, said: "They have seen what has happened in London and New York and they can't be seen as terrorists any more.

"They want to be seen as a law-abiding organisation but they are a terrorist organisation. It is a statement 30 years too late."