IMC says signs on IRA activity are 'encouraging'

Northern Ireland's ceasefire watchdog said today that initial signs following the Provisional IRA's decision to end its armed campaign were "encouraging".

However, in its seventh report covering the six-month period from March 1st to August 31st last, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) said its assessment of the Provisionals' behaviour was "rather limited" because it covered five months before the IRA said it was ending its armed campaign.

The IRA said on July 28th it had formally ordered an end to its armed campaign and ordered all IRA units to dump their weapons and follow "purely political and democratic programmes". On September 26th last, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) said the Provisional IRA had disposed of all of its arms.

In today's report the IMC said in the period before the July statement the Provisional IRA in Northern Ireland "continued to recruit and give briefings on personal security and counter-surveillance to new and existing members of the organisation.

"We believe that in the early part of the period under review in this report training took place, including in the use of weapons.

"We have no evidence of training or recruitment after the 28 July statement."

The report said there were indications that the organisation's intelligence function remained active but that its focus "may be becoming more political".

The IMC said the Provisionals were responsible for a number of attacks over the six-month period under review. "It undertook one shooting attack, in early July of a person whom it had assaulted in March, and 10 assaults, 9 between mid-March and mid-June and one in early August shortly after the statement."

The victim on this last occasion, according to the IMC, was an IRA member.

"We do not know the reason for the assault although it could reflect a concern in the organisation to curtail either unacceptable activities or support for dissident republicans."

The report said the IRA had wanted the summer's marching season to pass without civil disorder incited by republicans and that it had trid to stop rioting by nationalists.

In May, the Provisionals forced the removal of a family from their home, and attempted to do so to another family in June. But it decided to allow other it had previously exiled to return to the Short Strand in Belfast, possibly because of the reaction to the murder of Robert McCartney in January, the IMC report stated.

"Clearly we are looking for cumulative indications of changes in behaviour over a more sustained period of time, building on the PIRA statement of 28 July and the decommissioning of weapons reported by the IICD on 26 September," the IMC concluded in relation to the IRA.

The report was received by the Irish and British governments on Friday. It is seen as a crucial kick-start to a series of moves by Dublin and London intended to create the conditions for the restoration of power sharing in the North.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern and Northern Secretary Peter Hain are expected to comment on the document at a lunchtime press conference at a meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference in Dublin.

Commenting on the report, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said in a statement that, taken with the IRA statement and the act of final decommissioning "there does appear to be the potential for a huge transformation in the situation in Northern Ireland and a full return to representative politics."