Ritchie says funding rests on UDA arms progress

A threat to withdraw a £1.2 million (€1

A threat to withdraw a £1.2 million (€1.73 million) grant from a loyalist "conflict transformation" initiative will be carried through unless the UDA announces sufficient progress on decommissioning, a Stormont minister has reiterated.

This is despite a suggestion at the weekend from Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward that the paramilitary group has begun "meaningful engagement and negotiations have started" with Gen John de Chastelain's decommissioning body.

Social development minister Margaret Ritchie, who issued the funding warning after UDA-linked violence in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim and Bangor, Co Down in August, said yesterday she will only decide after her 60-day deadline for significant progress on putting illegal weapons beyond use passes tomorrow night regardless of what Mr Woodward said. She had warned the UDA that actual decommissioning had to have started by tomorrow.

Yesterday she said: "Some progress has been made. I am waiting to the end of the 60 days in order to monitor the situation. I have to base my decision on all the evidence in front of me," she said.

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Ms Ritchie, the SDLP's sole minister in the Executive, will keep appointments in Brussels this week and it is possible she will not make a definitive statement until after tomorrow.

Mr Woodward's intervention drew strong criticism from Alliance leader David Ford who accused him of bailing out the UDA in advance of tomorrow's deadline. Mr Ford, an Assembly member for South Antrim where the UDA remains particularly strong, called for the SDLP minister to stand her ground.

"This statement cannot be used as a get-out clause for the UDA to get their funding and I would again urge Margaret Ritchie to stick to her deadline," he said.

"This unhelpful statement from Mr Woodward suggests a lack of respect for the devolved institutions in general and the work of Margaret Ritchie in particular." Her party opposed the decision to support the conflict transformation initiative announced by the British government last March before devolution was restored. The policy is also opposed by Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde.

He told a meeting of the Policing Board last week that the connection between money and decommissioning "was a false one".

However, Jackie Gallagher of the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG), which is linked to the outlawed UDA, said the paramilitary group would "move on" but only when conditions enabled it to do so.