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Adams 'confident' IRA will disarm fully
by Shawn Pogatchnik

The Associated Press Translate This Article
23 September 2005

DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Friday he was 'quite confident and satisfied' that the outlawed Irish Republican Army will get rid of its stockpiled weapons, but he declined to comment on when the historic move would happen.

Adams spoke as his IRA-linked party entered a Dublin meeting with Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and other senior Irish government ministers—their first such public contact since January. Officials in both the British and Irish governments said they were expecting confirmation of major IRA disarmament moves soon, possibly next week.

On July 28, following years of diplomatic pressure from both governments, the IRA announced it had formally renounced violence for political purposes and would disarm fully in cooperation with John de Chastelain, a retired Canadian general.

'I'm quite confident and satisfied the IRA will honor its commitment,' said Adams, flanked by deputy leader Martin McGuinness and several other Sinn Fein figures outside Ahern's office.

'I suppose, like everybody else, we're waiting for the IRA to do what I think most people haven't yet, understandably, absorbed the importance of - that is, following through on its formal ending of its campaign, it's going to put weapons beyond use. That, I think, opens up a completely new vista.'

Fueling speculation of imminent IRA moves, Sinn Fein is planning its biggest Dublin rally in years Saturday, and McGuinness will travel to Washington on Tuesday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair will address his Labour Party's annual conference Tuesday, while the Irish parliament reconvenes from its summer recess the following day.

The IRA has observed an open-ended truce since 1997 after killing nearly 1,800 people in a 27-year campaign to overthrow Northern Ireland by force. The IRA was supposed to have disarmed fully by May 2000 under terms of Northern Ireland's 1998 Good Friday peace accord.

But the underground group refused to start the secretive process until October 2001 and halted it two years later, with most of its stockpiled weapons still hidden in dumps in rural parts of the Republic of Ireland.

The IRA's refusal to disarm helped undermine the central goal of the 1998 peace deal: a joint Catholic-Protestant administration that included Sinn Fein. The four-party coalition suffered several breakdowns and collapsed for good in 2002.

Negotiations to revive power-sharing failed in December, when the IRA refused to allow its disarmament to be publicly documented. Without such evidence, the major Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists, refused to share power with Sinn Fein.

Within days of that breakdown, the IRA was accused of mounting the world's biggest cash robbery, when gangs took two families of Northern Bank employees hostage in December and forced the employees to clear out the equivalent of $50 million from the bank's central Belfast vault.

The Irish government cut off public diplomatic contact with Sinn Fein after the raid. Ahern accused Adams and McGuinness of knowing in advance about the robbery, while Ahern's justice minister, Michael McDowell, identified both men as veteran IRA commanders—the first time the Irish government publicly did so.

Adams and McGuinness denied all the allegations but, according to police and Irish government sources, both formally resigned in May from the IRA's seven-man 'army council' after three decades at the helm.

Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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