Security backlash on any arms `equivalence' deal

Security chiefs in Northern Ireland are believed to have warned Mr Peter Mandelson that they would not participate in any scheme…

Security chiefs in Northern Ireland are believed to have warned Mr Peter Mandelson that they would not participate in any scheme resulting from a decommissioning deal which implied "equivalence" between security force and paramilitary weaponry.

British sources last night refused to be drawn on claims that the GOC in Northern Ireland, Lieut Gen Sir Hew Pike, had threatened to resign if a "National Day of Reconciliation" marked by a ceremonial or symbolic destruction of some weaponry by all sides went ahead.

Usually reliable sources insist that such a threat was made.

However, official sources would say only that "there is understandable sensitivity" around the issue of equivalence, and that "people feel very strongly about it.".

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There are also suggestions of tensions between Mr Mandelson and the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, on the issue of a Day of Reconciliation, first mooted as part of the aborted Hillsborough deal last Easter, despite the fact that the Secretary of State himself expressed some enthusiasm for the concept recently in the House of Commons.

British sources dismissed another report yesterday of tensions between Mr Mandelson and Downing Street, and specifically that No 10 had not been kept fully informed of Mr Mandel son's discussions with Mr David Trimble ahead of the appointment of the power-sharing Executive last November.

It was suggested that Mr Mandelson had not made sufficiently clear to No 10 his commitment to the deadline for suspension, and that this consequently had not been properly conveyed to Dublin or, in turn, to the IRA.

This was dismissed out of hand along with recurring suggestions, emanating from Dublin, that the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, had received conflicting signals about the British government's intentions from Mr Blair and Mr Mandelson in the hours leading to the suspension of the Executive.

Meanwhile The Irish Times has been told that Gen John de Chastelain is not holding back "significant or substantial" details of an IRA position on decommissioning.

Despite repeated indications to the contrary, usually reliable sources said last night there was no question of the general holding back "some great mass of detail" on an IRA position statement with the potential of itself to reverse Mr Mandelson's suspension of the Executive.

Confirmation of this view also came from Mr Ken Maginnis, the Ulster Unionist security spokesman, who questioned the general last week about a suggestion by Mr Seamus Mallon that the independent commission had further, critical information about the IRA's intentions.

Mr Maginnis said he had received "a categoric assurance" from Gen de Chastelain that "there is no third page". Mr Maginnis also said that, at their Downing Street meeting on Wednesday, neither Mr Blair nor Mr Ahern could "justify" the presumed significance of the IRA statement to the general "in terms of providing either a start date or a completion date" for decommissioning.

A British government source said "there was a bit more [to the IRA statement] than might have been made publicly available", but added that the entire thing was "so hedged around with conditions as to make it unworkable" in the circumstances of Friday, February 11th.