'Decommissioning has already begun' - IRA

The IRA has issued a groundbreaking statement saying that it has already begun the process of decommissioning its weapons.

The statement says the IRA has implemented the scheme agreed with the International Independent Commission on Decommissioning earlier this year.

On August 8th, the IRA proposed a method for destroying its arsenal, a method the IICD chairman John de Chastelain said was satisfactory.

According to today’s statement, that method has already been used to destroy an unspecified amount of IRA arms.

Despite this unprecedented move, the IRA stressed that its only motive for decommissioning was to save the Irish peace process from imminent collapse.

The statement said decommissioning was never a part of the Good Friday Agreement and was only introduced as a precondition “to undermine and frustrate progress”.

The IRA said there are elements in the British establishment and within unionism that are “fundamentally opposed to change” and that have used the arms issue to prevent changes to Northern society.

Today’s move by the IRA was what unionists, the Irish and British Governments and the US administration have been waiting for in recent weeks.

However, although the statement signals that decommissioning has begun, it does not state the amount of arms that have been destroyed and what method was used.

Earlier this week, the hardline Democratic Unionist Party said it will only accept a move by the IRA if it decommissions all its weapons in a transparent manner.

However, the Ulster Unionist Party’s response to today’s statement is what really matters.

If UUP leader David Trimble accepts the move, then his ministers will seek re-appointment to the Northern Assembly, thereby saving the North’s political institutions from collapse.

For the past three years, Mr Trimble has been trying to get Sinn Fein expelled from the Assembly because of the IRA’s procrastination on decommissioning.

In recent months, he has changed tactics in favour of a mass unionist resignation, but, with decommissioning now a reality, Mr Trimble will have no more excuses for refusing to share power with Sinn Fein.