DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson has warned that republicans must "maximise the transparency" of IRA decommissioning, to be announced this afternoon, if there is to be any hope of breaking the deadlock.
Mr Robinson claimed the IRA appeared poised to carry out decommissioning in a manner unconvincing to unionists.
As Gen John de Chastelain prepares to announce this afternoon that the IRA has rendered its arsenals beyond use, Mr Robinson insisted unionists formed the main audience to be convinced that the IRA had disarmed.
He claimed Sinn Féin's chief negotiator Martin McGuinness had said the principal audience to be convinced was international opinion. "Once again he has got it wrong," said Mr Robinson. "The purpose of decommissioning is to build confidence here in Northern Ireland that terrorism is ended and the guns have gone. The people to be convinced are those who have had those guns pointed at them for the last 30 years.
"A concise performance from the decommissioning body and a heap of spin from Sinn Féin with synchronised applause from London, Dublin and Washington might be enough to gull a compliant media and untutored world opinion, but unionists who have seen what the IRA has done and know how they have conned governments so many times before will not swallow a stunt."
SDLP leader Mark Durkan, at the British Labour Party conference in Brighton, last night welcomed news of IRA decommissioning. "But my welcome is tinged with regret. For years we said to Sinn Féin that the Belfast Agreement required decommissioning. We argued that the failure to put weapons beyond use was feeding anti-agreement unionism and giving them just the excuse they needed."
