Anger over loyalist attacks influenced IRA move

Pressure from grassroots republicans, angry at continuing loyalist attacks on Catholic areas, contributed to yesterday's decision…

Pressure from grassroots republicans, angry at continuing loyalist attacks on Catholic areas, contributed to yesterday's decision by the IRA to withdraw its offer to decommission weapons, senior political sources in the North said.

Both Government and political figures, however, retain some hope that the IRA's withdrawal of its offer to "verifiably" put weapons beyond use may be temporary. Sources involved in the negotiations in the North said the IRA statement was sufficiently open-ended to allow hope that the offer could be made again. The IRA referred to current "conditions" preventing it from decommissioning.

The statement also referred to unionist rejection of its offer and British government failure to implement the terms of the Belfast Agreement fully.

Yesterday the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Dr John Reid, announced he would continue with plans to institute a new police service in Northern Ireland and would seek the early publication of the report on the North's criminal justice system.

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He said: "I think we had made a historic, or at least a significant, move on decommissioning last week. I think it has taken so long to get there with such effort and proclaimed to have been of such a significant nature by republicans themselves, that to have broken that agreement and walked away from it within a week will not be easily understood at home or abroad.

"Decommissioning remains an indispensable part of that agreement and I will not be deflected and not deterred from proceeding with those parts of the agreement, like creating a new police service in Northern Ireland and the renewal of the criminal justice system, which are of benefit to all the people of Northern Ireland."

Predictably, the anti-Belfast Agreement unionist, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, insisted the IRA statement was evidence that its proposed method was nothing more than a "tactical ploy" to catch unionists off guard.

"The fact that they have so hastily withdrawn the offer indicates no intention, at this stage, to make serious movement on decommissioning. Taken together with the arrests of three senior IRA members in Colombia, it indicates to us that the IRA is as wedded to the theology of revolutionary terrorism, having not embarked upon the transition to peace and democracy."

However, the Ulster Unionist Assembly Minister, Mr Michael McGimpsey, described the IRA's withdrawal of its decommissioning as "short-term manoeuvring" and a "cynical publicity stunt" which flew in the face of how politics was conducted among democrats.

Sinn Fein blamed the withdrawal of the offer on the British government which it said was refusing to implement the Belfast Agreement and on unionist insistence on the rejection of policing changes recommended by the Patten Commission.

The SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, said: "I believe the IRA proposal was a very genuine one, but more important than that it was endorsed by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning. For the unionists to reject the IICD's determination and for the government to do what it did is hardly the stuff of peacemaking."

Rejection unacceptable, says IRA text: page 6; Arrest in Colombia may have prompted IRA to withdraw offer: page 14; Editorial comment: page 15