IRA ‘will never hand over all its weapons’

TOTAL IRA disarmament is a mirage, it was claimed yesterday.

The warning comes as decommissioning chief General John de Chastelain waits for the call to negotiate his way across miles of landscape where an estimated 150 tonnes of Provisional weapons are hidden.

Former west Belfast IRA man Anthony McIntyre insisted: “There are guns outside their control and some they won’t hand over.

“The IRA know they are going to have to keep some to please people... for a community defence.”

An exact inventory of the organisation’s arms is notoriously difficult to obtain.

According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, three tonnes of Semtex explosive, 588 AKM assault rifles, another 400 assorted rifles, 10 general-purpose machine guns and 17 DShK heavy duty versions are buried in secret underground bunkers.

Another 46 RPG-7 missiles, 600 handguns, 40 machine guns, 1.5 million rounds of ammunition and seven flame-throwers have also been smuggled in.

The Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists will settle for nothing less than a complete emptying of all arms dumps. But memories have dimmed in the 10 years since the Provos first declared a ceasefire.

With the violence significantly reduced, commanders may no longer know where every gun is stored.

The terrorist organisation also lost control of significant caches when former quartermaster Michael McKevitt split bitterly in 1997 to form the dissident Real IRA.

Despite his outspoken criticisms of Sinn Féin since he quit the republican movement six years ago, McIntyre, who served 18 years in jail for an IRA murder, stressed the party can do little about these consignments.

“Gerry Adams and company can’t be held accountable for them,” he said. “Anyway, Adams knows the guns are no longer any use to his project. If he becomes part of the State he will have all the guns he needs.”

Not content with a proposal for two clergymen to witness the decommissioning, unionists want photographic proof of the destruction before sitting in a cabinet with Sinn Féin.

But before Gen de Chastelain packs his Polaroid alongside his hiking boots a former priest, who once brokered secret peace talks with the IRA, warned the DUP not to be fooled by the old adage that the camera never lies.

Denis Bradley, now vice chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, said: “It’s a bit churlish for the DUP to demand that, as they are the ones who are the greatest supporters of de Chastelain. They have never questioned him before.”

One analyst who refused to accept a deal was inevitable was Dr Sydney Elliott, a politics lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast.

Just over a year ago a major push to restore devolution collapsed when the Provisionals refused to let Gen de Chastelain reveal full details of their last disarmament move.

Dr Elliott said: “The IRA was, in my view, saying to Martin McGuinness, you cannot command us. To put it crudely the IRA gave him a one finger salute in October 2003. This year you don’t know whether Sinn Féin will carry it.”

Warnings have been issued that if the IRA’s Army Council agrees to scrap weapons stockpiles it could provoke fresh defections.

But with splinter republicans heavily infiltrated by informers, their credibility has been too damaged to consider joining, experts believe. Disillusioned IRA volunteers will instead weep tears of betrayal if their leaders agree to hand over the guns and go out of business for good.

Even republicans who lost faith years ago accept, however, that these numbers will be low, such is the continued trust in the strategy of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

Marian Price, one of the bomb team that blew up the Old Bailey in 1973, loathes how Sinn Féin has pursued power over the last decade.

Gerry Kelly, another of those behind the terror attack, was part of the SF delegation that today held an extraordinary two-hour meeting with PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde in Tony Blair’s London office.

Still living in the heart of republican west Belfast, Ms Price works for dissident republican prisoners and is a member of the Real IRA-linked 32 County Sovereignty Movement.

“There will be some people who leave, go home and just close the door. Those who hung on in hope that their suspicions were wrong will be devastated.

“But Sinn Féin will carry the majority with them because they have been bought off. People who were in jail for 20 years have come out and been given a comfortable life,” she said.

“It will be a tragic day for republicanism though.”