General de Chastelain and his team are poised to oversee a start to IRA decommissioning. Gerry Moriarty examines how it might be done.
Aaro Suonio, the Finnish spokesman for the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) had this to say about what Gen John de Chastelain, Andrew Sens and Brig Tauno Nieminen are up to at the moment: "There will be no running commentary on the whereabouts of the commissioners for obvious reasons."
The "obvious reasons" are that the three "decommissioners" should now be pulling on their wellingtons to trudge through the bogs of Ireland examining secret IRA bunkers stocked with Kalashnikovs, rocket-launchers, heavy machine guns and Semtex explosives. If they are not in the process of observing these stockpiles being transformed into ploughshares, so to speak, then there will be grounds for fearing that the IRA is reneging on its July commitment to get rid of its huge arsenals.
Neither the IICD nor the governments have hinted at any such concerns so the general and his colleagues in the company of the IRA and a Protestant and Catholic cleric should now be doing what they are generously paid to do by Dublin and London.
Two or three weeks should see the job finished, well-placed sources told The Irish Times.
Thereafter, with considerable fanfare, the disposing of the IRA's weapons of destruction should be announced. That could bring us to late September or early October - assuming everybody follows the script.
It will be tough enough for Canadian Gen de Chastelain, Finnish Brig Nieminen and former senior US State Department official Mr Sens, who respectively are aged 68, 65 and 62. They are all retired but are in good physical shape and should be well able to manage the Bog of Allen or the foothills of the Sperrin Mountains or wherever the IRA have hidden their guns and explosives.
The rules of decommissioning are simple: the arsenals must either be rendered beyond use or made permanently inaccessible. That will involve overseeing some major mechanical activity, possibly cementing over dumps or cutting up the weapons so they can't be used again.
The commissioners must be certain that the Semtex isn't going to explode in months or years to come. It must be clear that dissident republicans can't dig up the guns and recommission them. The IICD men have "explosive ordnance" experts from Canada and the US to advise them on how to ensure this material can't be reactivated or accessed. According to security sources in the North and South we're talking here about 700 rifles, mostly Kalashnikovs but also some Armalites, two or three tons of Semtex, 50 or so machine guns, a couple of high-powered sniper rifles, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, rocket launchers, detonators, flame throwers, revolvers and at least one surface-to-air missile.
Most of this murderous stuff came from Libya in the 1970s and 1980s through its leader, Col Muammar Gadafy. Everything that is decommissioned has to be inventoried by the commissioners, which explains why last week Brig Nieminen was re-appointed to the IICD. At least two commissioners must participate in each decommissioning event and the extra member on the team will ease what should be a heavy schedule for the men.
The last and third act of IRA decommissioning was in October 2003. That was when Gen de Chastelain arrived into the Throne Room of Hillsborough Castle with mud on his shoes and told us that "yes", the IRA had carried out another act of disarmament but "no", he couldn't say what was disarmed because he was instructed not to do so by the IRA. Anyone who attended that calamitous press conference with the general, exhausted from a lengthy tour of IRA arms sites, knew that there and then a carefully choreographed agreement to restore devolution thrashed out between the governments, the IRA and the parties - with the exception of the DUP - was sunk.
It was this gagging of the general by "P O'Neill", the mythical IRA spokesman, that effectively handed the political initiative to the DUP and ultimately cost David Trimble leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party and destroyed the UUP in Westminster.
Detail on decommissioning would have provided Mr Trimble with a fighting chance against Ian Paisley. And we saw last December, when yet another opportunity for agreement collapsed, how Dr Paisley is less amenable and even much more volatile a politician than Mr Trimble when striking a bargain.
Gen de Chastelain was criticised for his presentational skills at that shambles of a press conference but senior contacts subsequently said they had some sympathy for him. The IRA effectively held him incommunicado while by day and by night its members brought him on a less than magical mystery tour though the Irish hinterlands looking into holes. No wonder at that press conference, as one official put it, "he looked like he came through a hedge backwards".
What the general and the clerics can say this time, therefore, will be crucial to whether out on the streets the public, particularly the unionist public, believes that the IRA has truly dismantled its killing machine.
The credibility of this event will determine whether sometime next year or maybe in 2007 the Northern Executive and Assembly can be restored and all the institutions of the Belfast Agreement, including the important North-South element, can return to full working order. Establishing clear ground rules in this area was probably one of the most critical conversations the general had with the IRA when the organisation re-established contact with the IICD after its July statement. He knows how that that press conference damaged the IICD's standing , and it is virtually certain he will have resisted any attempt by the IRA to muzzle the decommissioning body or the clerics.
Sinn Féin, the all-Ireland party with major all-Ireland political ambitions, must make political capital from disarmament. It would seem, therefore, in its interests that the IRA is much more forthcoming this time. Word on the ground is that the IRA is honouring much of the spirit and letter of its statement. IRA "punishment" attacks appear to have stopped. Robberies are continuing but not being blamed on the IRA. Smuggling might be a different matter, but is it specifically being carried out on IRA instructions?
Anecdotally, it seems that when the IRA sternly commanded its members "to fully comply" with the order not to engage in any "other activities whatsoever" - at least in relation to its more high profile activities - it generally meant what it said. We'll have a better idea if that really is the case when the Independent Monitoring Commission reports next month.
So, the omens are reasonably positive, although everyone knows the IRA has a propensity at critical times of political hope of satisfying its own constituency but maintaining just the right amount of instability to keep the governments agitated and unionists upset, uncertain, divided and rather paranoid.
If the IRA complies it should indicate it genuinely wants a deal. It if plays "silly buggers" with the issue of disarmament, to quote a favourite phrase of Jack Charlton, it may indicate - as some commentators contend - that the IRA is working to a long-term strategy that doesn't countenance living agreeably with unionism.
We are in new territory here. In the history of the IRA, what was promised in the July statement hasn't happened before, either after the Civil War or the IRA Border campaign of 1956-1962. The order then was to dump arms. This time it's to dump and and destroy them. That must be hard to swallow for many republicans. If it goes as pledged then this will be a huge moment in recent Irish history and a major achievement by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. But nobody is getting over-excited because, as one official put it, "you can never tell with the Provos".
The statement to end its armed campaign and get rid of its weapons appears by IRA standards clear and unambiguous. Yetat similar times of expectation the IRA fell short. The historic ground-breaking potential is there but let's see what happens.