Work starts on demolishing British army posts in Armagh

Work has begun on demolishing one of the British army observation towers on Camlough Mountain and another tower on Sturgan Mountain in South Armagh, the Northern Ireland Secretary Dr John Reid has told the House of Commons.

Dr Reid said work would start tomorrow on demolishing the supersangar at Newtownhamilton, Co Armagh and the army base at Magherafelt, Co Derry.

He told MPs the British government would undertake "a progressive rolling programme of security normalisation, reducing levels of troops and installations in Northern Ireland as the security situation improves. Our aim is to secure as early a return as possible to normal security arrangements."

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He added that Northern Ireland's political institutions - including the Assembly and Executive, the North-South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council - "should now be restored to full operation as quickly as possible, and should operate in a stable and uninterrupted way".

He also announced that under the release scheme agreed in the Belfast Agreement, the British and Irish governments would not be pursuing supporters of organisations on ceasefire who faced prosecutions and extradition proceedings for offences committed before April 10th 1998.

Dr Reid said the IRA's move was "unprecedented and genuinely historic - it takes the peace process onto a new political level".

However, he stressed there remained a "significant threat" from loyalist paramilitaries and dissident republicans.

Dr Reid: warned of existing threat

He made a plea to loyalist paramilitaries, and political representatives with influence in loyalist communities, to work towards decommissioning themselves and ending ongoing violence.

"Some of the loyalist organisations have played a crucial part in the peace process. I now ask them to ask themselves what they can do to move the process forward. Whatever else there must be an end to the mindless sectarian violence of recent weeks."

A spokesman for Mr Blair said this morning the British government remained alert to the threat posed by dissident paramilitary groups. "There is a continuing threat from dissident republicans, just as there is a continuing threat from certain loyalist quarters.

"We have to remain vigilant about that... in no way are we complacent about the nature of the threat from that area. Dissident republicans, just like dissident loyalists, will want to try to destroy what we have achieved. We have to stop them doing so."

Additional reporting - PA