The decommissioning of paramilitary armaments could not be achieved outside the parameters of the Belfast Agreement, according to the North's Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon. In his address to the Northern Ireland Assembly yesterday on a report finalising details for the setting up of the political institutions under the Belfast Agreement, he said the harsh reality was that if the agreement was damaged then the prospects for decommissioning were also damaged.
He said decommissioning would be resolved by a "voluntary act or not at all" and urged members to "rise above" the arms issue and "sustain the vision that carried this agreement through". Mr Mallon said there was no legal or technical precondition in the agreement for an arms handover prior to the setting-up of an executive. However, he stressed that without a resolution of the weapons issue, there would not be "sufficient trust" between parties for the process to work effectively.
"We can either lay the basis today for resolving these issues and moving forward or we can ensure that the work we have already agreed and the structure we have put so much into is put in jeopardy. Surely there is only one answer to that question."
Mr Mallon commended Sinn Fein Assembly members for the "courage" shown by many in the party who had "challenged" those within the wider republican community. The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the Rev Ian Paisley, said the way forward for the process was to "give into the lawless". He said there would be no decommissioning and also accused the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, of performing a U-turn on the arms issue by supporting the unionist position on decommissioning before clarifying his position on Sunday.
Sinn Fein would be part of an executive without IRA guns being handed over because "the two governments and world opinion would be stronger than Mr Trimble". He added: "I for one will never crawl to them." Dr Paisley accused Irish governments in the past of "violating every agreement they had ever reached with British governments". He also criticised the proposed structures for the Civic Forum. He condemned the First and Deputy Minister's Offices for taking six places of the 60 seats in the forum and leaving only two for victims groups and three for agriculture.
The deputy leader of the DUP, Mr Peter Robinson, said he had little doubt that Mr Mallon believed what he was saying. However, he added that Mr Trimble's speech lacked "passion" and "conviction".