Editorial To forsake arms

One of the most encouraging indications for the future of the North came this week when the new minister for education, Martin McGuinness, said that the main "D" word in his vocabulary was dyslexia, not decommissioning. He pointed to figures that showed that one in 10 schoolchildren in Northern Ireland suffer from the learning disability and said that his department intended to address the issue as soon as possible.

It would indeed be wonderful if others would follow suit, and concentrate on letting the parties now in government go about the business of governing on behalf of the people who elected them to the job. This is too much to hope for, thanks to the fact that another deadline — the end of January — has been created in regard to decommissioning, which threatens yet again to bring things to a crisis point.

Sinn Fein is correct to say that the issue has to be left to be dealt with by General John de Chastelain, the chairman of the Decommissioning Commission, as spelled out in the Good Friday peace agreement. But the same agreement stipulates that the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons has to be completed by May of next year.

Unionists are not helping their case by demanding it begin according to their timetable. Yet there is no way around the fact that what has an end must indeed have a beginning.

The appointment of an IRA representative to meet with de Chastelain, and the announcement late last week that the two have met, is indeed another move in the right direction. But as Sinn Fein knows only too well, the potential for making mischief on this issue among the anti-agreement parties in the new assembly is still great.

The only way that this dangerous and divisive controversy can be short-circuited is for de Chastelain to be able to announce sooner rather than later that the actual process of getting rid of weapons has begun, not just that talks about the modalities of doing it are taking place.

Skeptics say that even if the IRA were to go ahead and deliver actual weapons, unionists would come up with another objection regarding quantity. The Rev. Ian Paisley’s followers in the DUP would no doubt be the first to raise objections. But, regardless, Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble would almost certainly welcome the confirmation that the process was under way. The principle of disarmament will therefore have been conceded.

This is the logic inherent in the whole peace process. And it needs no philosopher to remind us that when logic is defied the consequences can be dire.