General de Chastelain yesterday managed to carefully outmanoeuvre the confidentiality clause imposed upon him, writes Tom Clonan.
Gen John de Chastelain and his colleagues in the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) are bound to secrecy under the terms of the legislation setting up the commission. It provides that the members of the commission and people working for it shall be bound not to disclose any information obtained in the course of their work unless such disclosure is authorised by or on behalf of the commission.
This confidentiality clause, along with the amnesties and immunities provided for in Irish and British legislation, have provided armed subversives with the necessary guarantees of "inviolability" and immunity from prosecution that has facilitated the decommissioning process to date.
The guarantees and privileges for paramilitaries surrendering arms are significant and wide-ranging. They include a prohibition on the prosecution of persons being in possession of or transporting weapons, ammunition and explosives while engaged in the decommissioning process. There is also a prohibition on the forensic examination or testing of such weapons, explosives and ammunition. The provisions effectively rule out the possibility of the examination of paramilitary arms and explosives for the purposes of retrospective investigations into criminal or terrorist acts. Without such guarantees and confidentiality clauses, it is unlikely that any subversives - of whatever political persuasion - would engage with the decommissioning process.
As a result of these restrictions, Gen de Chastelain came in for a deal of criticism and hostile scrutiny during his ill-fated press conference following the Provisional IRA's last major act of decommissioning in October 2003. During that press conference, Gen de Chastelain refused to state in even the vaguest terms the magnitude or nature of the ordnance destroyed. He spoke only of "light, medium and heavy" ordnance - giving no real indication as to the nature or amount of weapons destroyed. In the absence of photographic evidence and with no eyewitness accounts of the destruction of PIRA weapons, Gen de Chastelain was unable on that occasion to provide even the most basic "word picture" to describe the "significant" act of decommissioning that had taken place.
Yesterday's press conference, however, yielded a great deal more information. In terms of the type of ordnance destroyed, statements from Gen de Chastelain and his staff, along with the clergymen present, indicated that the full spectrum of weapons in PIRA possession had been put beyond use. This included references to rifles, pistols, mortars, detonators, machine guns and explosives. At one point, reference was made to weapons dating from the 1950s - strongly hinting that the entire PIRA arsenal, from early British and American imports to latter-day Libyan and US models had been destroyed.
Further allowing those attending the conference to "read between the lines" Gen de Chastelain managed to carefully outmanoeuvre the confidentiality clauses imposed upon him by stating - more than once - that the amount of ordnance destroyed was consistent with those intelligence estimates of the PIRA's arsenal supplied by the intelligence community in both the Irish and British jurisdictions.
These estimates broadly agree on a PIRA weapons inventory consisting of between 800 and 1,100 assault rifles, over 500 automatic pistols and revolvers, at least one Surface-to-Air-Missile, a sniper rifle, a small number of flame-throwers and at least 2¼ tons of Semtex.
By repeatedly stating that he had personally supervised the destruction of a quantum of ordnance consistent with these figures, Gen de Chastelain spoke volumes in terms of the total numbers of weapons, ammunition and explosives destroyed over the last number of weeks. Gen de Chastelain also went on to unequivocally state that the ordnance put beyond use under the supervision of the IICD - of which the IICD retains a full inventory - represented the "totality of the IRA arsenal".
In contrast to Gen de Chastelain's reticent performance at the October 2003 press conference, the net effect of yesterday's combined statements were designed to yield a "read my lips" assertion that the PIRA had fully decommissioned.
A further significant aspect of yesterday's press conference were repeated references to the "meticulous" exhaustive and intensive nature of the decommissioning process, with a number of statements to the effect that Gen de Chastelain had personally handled all of the weapons and ordnance destroyed in the latest round of decommissioning. A physical, hands-on check of a weapon - as opposed to a mere visual inspection - strongly suggests that the weapons were disassembled prior to their being put beyond use. This would ensure that the firing mechanisms, firing pins, bolt faces and barrels of the weapons were exposed to fouling and destruction by various mechanisms or methods such as grinding, cutting, crushing - or most likely, burial in situ in concrete. Despite their robust appearance, rifles and pistols are designed to be easily disassembled in this fashion and once taken apart, their inner mechanisms are extremely vulnerable to fouling. Individual attention given to each weapon in this way would certainly have satisfied the IICD that only viable weapons - not ageing or unserviceable decoys - were brought in for destruction. Such a disassembly of weapons - with the separation of firing mechanisms entailed - would also provide a guarantee of each weapon having been put verifiably beyond use.
It is likely that the Semtex was burned in situ also. Highly stable, plastic explosives such as Semtex are capable of being safely and readily burned in a manner not unlike domestic firelighters. Plastic explosives also burn quickly - it takes approximately 45 seconds to burn one kilo of Semtex.
In short, reading between the lines of yesterday's IICD press conference, there is a more or less explicitly stated message - carefully articulated despite the confidentiality clauses of the decommissioning acts - that the PIRA have finally decommissioned.
Dr Tom Clonan is The Irish Times Security Analyst.