IRA: proposals ‘off the table’

That isolation is set to deepen this week as the report of the Independent Monitoring Commission is published.
It’s expected to recommend the suspension of Sinn Fein from any new power-sharing Executive for at least a six-month period and financial penalties to punish republicans for the IRA’s alleged role in the bank robbery.
In a lengthy statement issued on Wednesday night, the IRA said: “At this time it appears that the two government are intent on changing the basis of the peace process.”
The IRA said its offer last year to stand down and cease its activities had been “squandered” by the Dublin and London governments who were “pandering to rejectionist unionism instead of upholding their own commitments and honoring their own obligations.”
The IRA added that it did not intend to “remain quiescent within this unacceptable and unstable situation. It has tried our patience to the limit.”
In a reassessment of its position and in response to others withdrawing their commitments, the IRA said it was taking all its proposals “off the table.”
The following night, after both governments and the North’s chief constable had said the statement posed no threat to the IRA’s ceasefire and was, in effect, a statement of the obvious, the IRA issued a second, far shorter, statement.
This was conveyed to journalists in Belfast and Dublin by a senior republican source who said the two governments were seeking to downplay the first statement because they were “making a mess” of the peace process and that they should not underestimate the “seriousness of the situation.”
The Irish government then hardened its position by demanding Sinn Fein sever its links with the IRA in order to play a full part in democratic politics.The minister for foreign affairs, Dermot Ahern, said that although Sinn Fein had a mandate, it had to break the connection with the IRA “once and for all” if the party wanted to participate in any democratic institutions North or South of the border.
“We have got the distinct and definite view of the police forces on both sides of the border that there was IRA involvement in the robbery and that has had a huge effect on the trust and confidence of the two governments,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, said: “I can put my hand on my heart and say the IRA did not carry out the robbery because, unlike others, I have been to the IRA and got . . . assurance that they were not involved. I believed them then and I believe them now.”
The DUP deputy leader, Peter Robinson, said, following the IRA statements, that it had butchered people for 25 years, had rejected agreement and instead carried out the biggest bank robbery in British history.
It now had the “bare-faced effrontery to say that the British government have tried its patience to the limit,” said Robinson, asking if London “had the bottle, the political backbone and the moral courage to take on those gunmen and gangsters?”
The party’s leader, the Rev. Ian Paisley, said the IRA’s words “will be treated with the contempt they deserve. The IRA had never any intention of decommissioning in a credible, transparent and verifiable way. They never had any intention of giving up their criminal empire.”
Sinn Fein, meanwhile, is to mobilize support across Ireland in a series of rallies this week against anticipated recommendations of the Commission, a body dismissed by McGuinness as “three spooks and a lord.”
Irish government ministers have spoken out against sanctions against Sinn Fein, though, saying they give the party a spurious “victimhood” and achieve nothing.
Gerry Kelly joined other Sinn Fein leaders in skepticism on Dublin’s official stand against sanctions. “Given its history in establishing the Commission,” he said, “republicans are justifiably doubtful of this claim.
“If the Irish government is genuinely opposed to sanctions, then they need to stop them happening. Dublin are supposed to be co-equal partners with the British in the management of this process.
“This is an acid test of that status. So far on a number of key issues the Irish government have rolled over. If the report again demands sanctions, are the Irish government going to remove their appointed representative from it?”, he asked.