Unionists will accept disarmament, claims Adams

More and more unionists in the North will slowly accept that the IRA has decommissioned all its arms, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams claimed today.

The three-member International Independent Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) announced on Monday that it believed the terror group had verifiably put all of its weapons, ammunition and explosives beyond use during previous days.

While DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley immediately refused to accept the word of General John de Chastelain and independent witnesses Father Alec Reid and the Rev Harold Good, Ulster Unionist chairman Danny Kennedy said his party was satisfied with the verification from the two churchmen.

Welcoming Mr Kennedy’s comments, the Sinn Fein leader said today that unionists needed time and space to consider the issue but would eventually agree with the IICD.

“More and more people on the unionist side have a sense that this [IRA decommissioning] has been what the IICD said it was and what the two church witnesses clarified,” he said in Dublin.

“I think you’ll get more and more unionists coming around to that.”

Mr Paisley led a DUP delegation to see Gen de Chastelain yesterday along with other Northern Ireland political parties.

The North Antrim MP declared afterwards that the decommissioning was “a cover-up” and that some arms had gone missing and may have ended up in the hands of republican dissidents.

Speaking of Mr Paisley’s dismissive attitude towards the IICD’s work, Mr Adams said today: “You could have written the script. Ian Paisley went in to see the IICD in order to make the remarks he made.

“But I still think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

The Irish parliament is due to hear statements from Government and Opposition TDs later today on the IRA decommissioning as it resumes after its summer break.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Prime Minister Tony Blair are due to meet later this week to discuss ways to advance the peace process.

Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator Martin McGuinness is still in Washington for briefings on the issue with republican activists and Irish American politicians on Capitol Hill.