Bruton urges joint move on IRA arms

The Taoiseach and the leaders of the SDLP and Sinn Fein should come together to make a joint proposal to the IRA on arms, according to the Fine Gael leader, Mr Bruton.

In a statement yesterday, he suggested that a common front between the three leaders was now needed to ask the IRA to state formally and immediately that, if the arrangements envisaged in the Belfast Agreement began to function normally, it would say that its war was over for good and that its arsenal of weapons was redundant and would be disposed of in a verifiable way.

The balance of forces in the Assembly would bring the issue of IRA, UVF and UDA arms back to centre stage, Mr Bruton continued.

To understand the emotional force of this issue, one had only to envisage how mainstream nationalists in the South would feel if they were told that a loyalist political party with just 18 per cent of the vote was to have three seats in the Dublin Cabinet, two years after the end of a sustained bombing and assassination campaign by its military wing in Southern cities and while still keeping its offensive capacity intact, he added.

"If this matter is not overcome, there will be no Northern Executive, and if there is no Northern Executive, the Good Friday agreement will be stillborn," Mr Bruton concluded.