First watchtower to be pulled down after IRA pledge

Moves to tear down a British Army watchtower will begin today after the IRA’s pledge to ditch guns and end its terror campaign.

Soldiers are preparing to start dismantling Romeo 12 in south Armagh. A revised security normalisation programme will also be published soon, while plans are being made to allow on-the-run paramilitary fugitives to return home.

The authorities have reacted swiftly to the unprecedented declaration by the IRA of the end of the armed campaign it has waged for more than three decades.

But Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain accepted the organisation had broken its word before and insisted all violence and crime had to halt.

The £26.5m (€38m) Northern Bank heist in Belfast and the killing of Robert McCartney outside a city centre bar have fuelled unionist scepticism that the IRA will keep its word.

But with General John de Chastelain’s international disarmament body on standby to examine decommissioning and the Independent Monitoring Commission assessing its ceasefire, Mr Hain said every move would be studied.

He told BBC Breakfast: “It’s up to the IRA to deliver and they will be watched and we will be scrutinising everything. By actively shutting down, I don’t just mean bullets and bombs. I mean punishment beatings, criminality, targeting and the robbing of banks.”

Mr Hain is set to call new talks with the North’s political leaders in an attempt to restore devolution after the IRA ordered all units to dump arms and assist in the development of a democratic process.

Discussions are expected to begin in September, by which time the Irish and British governments hope the Provisionals will have completed the decommissioning process.

Gen de Chastelain is due to meet an IRA representative in the coming days as part of plans to empty the arms dumps.

Two clergymen – one Protestant, one Catholic – have been chosen to scrutinise the destruction, along with Gen de Chastelain.

Ulster Unionist leader Reg Empey will also meet his Assembly team today to assess the historic IRA statement.