The President, Mrs McAleese, said yesterday she accepts the IRA's commitment to the Belfast Agreement "at face value" and added that the agreement stated that all weapons, not just those held by the IRA, must be decommissioned.
Speaking in London after attending a private lunch with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace on the fourth day of a five-day visit to Scotland and England, the President praised politicians in Northern Ireland for their "extraordinary leadership" in reaching agreement on establishing an inclusive government. Decommissioning was an issue that must be resolved, and the President said she was optimistic about the future. She added, "I have to take at face value the kind of things the IRA is saying and among the things they have been saying, as I understand it recently, they have said that they are committed to the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement.
"Part and parcel of that is demilitarisation, the decommissioning of all weapons in Northern Ireland, not just of course those held by the IRA, but the demilitarisation of all what has been really 30 years of conflict, 30 years of hurt, 30 years of wounding."
Asked if she could envisage a scenario whereby the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, might succeed her as President, Mrs McAleese said: "I'm sure that there were people who would have regarded it perhaps as impossible that someone from Belfast who didn't have a vote in the election in which I stood for President would become President.
"History is just so full of the future history we have yet to make. It's just such a big adventure now that none of us really knows what is ahead of us."
On the final day of her visit today, an honorary degree, Doctor of the University, from the University of Surrey, will be conferred on Mrs McAleese. She will also visit staff and students from the Centre for Irish Studies at St Mary's College in London.