NI: Arms Decommissioning
01 November 1995
For a year, political progress over the future of the North of Ireland has been stalled over the issue of arms decommissioning. The IRA ceasefire which began 1 September 1994 was declared on the assumption that this would allow all party talks to begin, talks which would include Sinn Fein. The initial response of the British government was to demand assurances that the ceasefire was "permanent". In January 1995, this hardened when, during exploratory talks, British officials presented a Sinn Fein delegation with a paper on arms decommissioning. For the British, this is a matter of how to get the IRA to hand over illegal weapons and in particular semtex explosives. Sinn Fein's position is that the end of war requires a political settlement and de-militarisation on all sides, and that it cannot speak for the IRA which in any event will not give up its arms. By the time of Clinton's Washington conference on investment in Ireland, the British had developed the demand that Sinn Fein cannot be allowed to enter political talks until the IRA hands over some weapons, or as ex-security Minister for Northern Ireland Michael Mates puts it, a "substantial" amount of weapons. This condition became known as "Washington Three".
The establishment of an international body to examine how decommissioning might be accomplished appears to have been the idea of Unionist MP Ken Maginnis. Whether this is the case or not, both Irish and British governments began to focus on the notion of a "twin track" approach, involving political talks on the one hand and the decommissioning of weapons on the other. What they could not agree on - even if their disagreement was held in abeyance for Clinton's visit to Belfast at the end of November - was whether and how Washington Three should feature in the twin track approach. The Irish government , the SDLP and Sinn Fein agree that it is wrong to insist on the handing in of (some) weapons before talks take place, a position quietly supported by the Clinton administration, notwithstanding statements issued by the US Embassy in London. The British government and the Unionists are sticking to Washington Three, and the British sometimes hint that even this will not be enough to win the confidence of the Unionists sufficiently to bring them to round table talks P the latest joint communique can even be interpreted as giving the Unionists a veto over the entry of Sinn Fein to talks. As Robert Fisk put it in the Independent, "Ministers in the present-day Irish government have been both infuriated and fearful of John Major's repeated insistence on "decommissioning" as the price for all-party talks that included Sinn Fein - not just because of the terrible and unpublicised warnings of attacks into the Republic which the Protestant paramilitaries promised the Irish cabinet if the Belfast ceasefire broke down, but because, historically, the men and women of Ireland do not hand over their guns".
Although this basic issue has not been resolved, the British and Irish governments have agreed that an international body on arms decommissioning should report its findings by mid-January. They have agreed further to continue preliminary talks with a view to getting all party talks moving by the end of February.
Three people have been appointed to the International Body on Decommissioning. It will be led by a former US Senator, George Mitchell. Another member is the former prime minister of Finland, Harri Holkeri, and the third member is the soon to retire Canadian Chief of Defence Staff, General John de Chastelain. The latter is regarded as a controversial choice for two reasons.
Firstly, he has been strongly criticised for not resigning over a number of incidents involving Canadian troops, including the beating to death of a sixteen year old youth in Somalia. Secondly, de Chastelain has close personal ties to MI6 and the Irish government was opposed to his appointment. His father was a key operative for British I