INLA to confirm destruction of remaining weapons

THE INLA will later today declare its terror arsenal has finally been destroyed.

Responsible for some of the most infamous attacks of the Troubles, the paramilitary group’s move was being verified by arms decommissioner General John de Chastelain and comes four and a half years after the IRA took a similar step on the road to peace.

More than 120 people died at the hands of the INLA, including then Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman and close adviser to Margaret Thatcher, Airey Neave, who was blown up in a car bombing at the Houses of Parliament in London in 1979.

An INLA bombing in 1982 at the Droppin’ Well pub, Ballykelly, Co Derry, left 17 people dead in one of the bloodiest attacks seen in the North.

The group announced last November its “armed struggle” had come to an end, and David Ford of the cross-community Alliance Party said the move was a positive one. “This move is long overdue. The days of hatred and violence have to be over forever. Northern Ireland has moved a great distance forward but we must never be complacent.

“We must build a genuinely shared society to rid this region of the spectre of terrorism,” said Mr Ford who is expected to become the North’s first justice minister when policing powers are devolved to the Belfast assembly next April after years of wrangling.”

The DUP’s Gregory Campbell called for the INLA’s victims to be remembered. “All too often when moves like this occur, there is a tendency to forget what was carried out by these groups... All of them should decommission their weapons, none of them should have been armed and able to murder in the first instance and the regret is that there are still people mourning their previous actions and the heartache they left behind,” he said.

Meanwhile, the SDLP elected Margaret Ritchie as its leader following a tightly fought contest to replace Mark Durkan. The 51-year-old Stormont social development minister promised to make the nationalist grouping the biggest party in the North.

“I want our party to rise again and I want to become First Minister,” she told delegates at the party’s annual conference. Mr Durkan used an emotional farewell speech to the conference to demand greater power-sharing at Stormont and an end to the “stitch-up” between Sinn Féin and the DUP.