IRA ready to stand down by March

THE Provisional IRA will stand down by March next year if a historic breakthrough is achieved in the peace process, according to high-level sources in the Republican movement.

The IRA will formally declare it is being disbanded before, or during, March 2005 if the staged process that will flow from an agreement proceeds smoothly.

But in that scenario, according to the sources, the IRA’s formidable intelligence-gathering units will not be fully disbanded. While they will be stood down militarily, they will be redeployed and absorbed into the Sinn Féin party. The sources indicated that the former IRA personnel will form part of an expanded political intelligence-gathering unit, which will focus its efforts on political expansion in the South.