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IRA Announces Start to Disarmament
The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announced Tuesday that it had begun disarming, an unprecedented and historic gesture which is vital to save the province's crumbling peace process.
"In order to save the peace process we have implemented the scheme agreed with the IICD (Independent International Commission on Decommissioning) in August," local reports here quoted a statement, released by IRA to journalists in Belfast, as saying.
It said the IRA has put some weapons "beyond use" in what will be widely seen as an historic breakthrough for the Northern Ireland peace process.
The IRA leadership confirmed that a scheme agreed with the decommissioning body in August to put weapons "completely and verifiably beyond use" had been implemented.
This is the first time that a republican group which has violently resisted the British presence in Ireland has ever disposed of weaponry.
The move seems certain to breathe new life into the troubled peace process.
But yet there is no detail as to what quantity of arms was involved or where it occurred.
The statement referred to a political process on the "point of collapse" and said such a "collapse would certainly and eventually put the overall peace process in jeopardy."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to make a statement on the IRA move later on Tuesday.
If the move is acceptable to Northern Ireland's largest unionist party, the Ulster Unionists, it could lead to the restoration of Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive.
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