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Politics : Right Wing Extremist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (14205)	8/14/2001 10:18:09 AM
From: DMaA	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 59480

Speaking of dirty SOBs, the IRA has reneged on its promise to disarm: August 14, 2001 IRA Withdraws Plan to Disarm, Calling British, Protestant Demands 'Unacceptable' Associated Press DUBLIN -- The Irish Republican Army announced Tuesday it had withdrawn its agreement on a method for disarming, rebuffing Britain's efforts to create more negotiating time to preserve Northern Ireland's power-sharing government. In a statement to Irish media, the IRA didn't rule out the prospect of eventually scrapping some weapons. But the outlawed group emphasized that recent British and Protestant demands were "totally unacceptable." The move complicated efforts to salvage the Catholic-Protestant government at the heart of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord. The four-party coalition faced likely collapse last weekend, the apparent deadline for divided lawmakers to elect a Protestant to the government's vacated top post. But Britain intervened by withdrawing power from local hands for 24 hours, then restored power Sunday. That legal maneuver forestalled the vote for six weeks. The IRA said the major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, should have accepted its commitment as adequate. The Ulster Unionists' rejection, "compounded by the setting of preconditions, are totally unacceptable," the IRA said. "The subsequent actions of the British government, including their failure to fulfill their commitments, is also totally unacceptable," the group continued. "The conditions therefore do not exist for progressing our proposition. We are withdrawing our proposal." The IRA said Britain had acted illegally and in violation of the 1998 pact, a view supported only by the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party, junior Catholic members of the coalition. As a result, the IRA said, its agreement announced last week with retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain, chairman of an independent disarmament commission, had been withdrawn. In separate announcements last week, Mr. de Chastelain and the IRA said they had found a mutually acceptable way for the IRA to put weapons "beyond use." But they kept the method secret. Nor did they specify when the process would start, or what political conditions the IRA had placed on such a move. Senior Ulster Unionists said the statement demonstrated that the IRA offer had never been genuine. Sinn Fein officials couldn't be reached for immediate reaction. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams foreshadowed the IRA move during a rally of IRA supporters last weekend in Catholic west Belfast, his power base. To cheers, he told the crowd that the IRA wouldn't respond to pressure from Britain or the Ulster Unionists. Mr. Adams characterized the coming negotiations as "a six- or seven-week period in which the British government and unionists are going to try to put pressure on republicans to move to resolve issues on British government or unionist terms." "Is anyone here going to allow this to happen?" he asked. "No!" came the thunderous reply from the crowd. Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble has twice formed administrations that included Sinn Fein as part of deals that, to work, required a start to IRA disarmament in exchange. Mr. Trimble resigned as the administration's leader July 1 after a second deadline for IRA disarmament lapsed. Most political analysts calculate that Mr. Trimble has too little support among Protestant lawmakers to be re-elected leader unless the IRA offers more than words on disarmament. In February 2000, the last time the IRA's refusal to disarm undermined Mr. Trimble's hold on Protestant opinion, the IRA offered vague commitments to the disarmament commission hours before Britain suspended local powers indefinitely. The IRA responded by immediately withdrawing those commitments, chiefly an explanation for "the context" in which the group would get rid of weapons. That crisis ended with a new May 2000 agreement in which Britain pledged to continue its military cutbacks and plans for police reform, the IRA issued an unprecedented pledge to begin putting weapons "completely and verifiably beyond use," and Mr. Trimble persuaded a bare majority of Ulster Unionists to resume work with Sinn Fein. Mr. Trimble, who is on a two-week vacation in Austria, contends that the May 2000 experience shows that the IRA only responds to political pressure. Sinn Fein says the IRA might have begun to scrap weapons by now had Mr. Trimble not kept raising the issue. Copyright (c) 2001 Associated Press interactive.wsj.com