Adams says IRA may disarm

In a week that saw Sinn Fein piling pressure on the British and Irish governments to act as joint guarantors for implementing the Good Friday agreement, Adams went further than ever before in holding out the prospect of significant movement from the IRA.
His statement provoked widely differing reactions from the DUP.
Republicans, said Adams, need to be prepared to remove the IRA and the issue of IRA arms, given a context in which progress was possible. Such a context, said a senior republican source, however, does not yet exist and IRA disbandment is not being discussed, even internally.
In a separate statement, for an Irish Times article published on Tuesday, Adams also said renegotiating the agreement was “totally unacceptable,” while firmly placed policing on the agenda for the intensive talks due to begin in September.
Provided the outstanding issues on policing were dealt with, “as I believe they can be,” he said, then he would be prepared to ask for a special Ard Fheis to discuss Sinn Fein supporting the police, although responsibility would have to be devolved to Belfast.
Earlier, Adams said: “I personally feel that while there are justifiable fears within unionism about the IRA and while people have concerns about the IRA, I think political unionism uses the IRA and the issue of IRA arms as a excuse.
“I think that republicans need to be prepared to remove that as an excuse. But we who are in leadership will only be empowered to do so if there is a context in which we can make progress.”
The statement prompted feverish speculation that the IRA was preparing to disband, if the two governments created the correct context, but republican sources later said that that prospect was not even on the table for discussion.
The DUP’s Ian Paisley Jr. called Adams’s comments “meaningless, condescending, patronizing waffle.”
“It is action from the IRA and not words that are needed,” he said.
Later, however, one senior unnamed DUP source said Adams’s comments were “an interesting move, albeit only a beginning,” while another said the remarks should not be dismissed.
A senior republican source, meanwhile, poured cold water on reports that any decision to disband or dump arms had already been reached.
“The IRA is only one element in the process,” the source said. “What we have to see is whether the two governments will finally liberate both ourselves and the DUP by fully signing up to implementing the agreement.”
Adams was speaking after a former IRA prisoner publicly challenged the DUP MP, Jeffrey Donaldson, over decommissioning during a public question and answer session as part of Feile an Phobail, the West Belfast festival.
Speaking to a packed house of 1,000 people, Seanna Walsh, who was arrested in 1988 in connection with a homemade bomb, said decommissioning was a “red herring” because people could always get more weapons if they wanted to.
Donaldson insisted decommissioning was an essential element of the peace process.
“Whether people like it or not, the unionist community does not trust the IRA because of what has been visited upon them over 30 years,” he said. “We need to see the weaponry being dealt with in a credible verifiable way, within a defined time scale. I would prefer it to be dealt with as soon as possible, preferably before the end of 2004.”
Said Walsh: “Unless you reach some sort of agreement with me and people like me, that is the only way that people like me can be defused. Jeffrey is overconcerned with my capacity to make war.
“My capacity does not rely on anything that is under the ground. My capacity lies with the knowledge that people like me have.”