Sir, - In her column of February 4th, Mary Holland twice quoted without contradiction Sinn Fein's claim that the Belfast Agreement does not require it to decommission weapons. This claim is clearly wrong.
The Agreement states on page 20 that "all participants reaffirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations."
Sinn Fein has reneged on this commitment. It currently makes no commitment to decommission IRA weapons, now or in the future. Indeed, Martin McGuinness tells us that the IRA cannot and will not give up any arms.
Since the Chief Constable of the RUC believes that the IRA is heavily involved in almost daily beatings and mutilations, and in occasional murders, Sinn Fein has also reneged on its "absolute commitment" to abide by exclusively peaceful means.
Mary Holland's view seems to be that none of this matters. In her mind the deal is that all of the concessions made by unionists on Good Friday are made in return for the IRA scaling down its violence while maintaining its lethal capacity intact. Many democracies would have had difficulty in signing the type of deal actually agreed last Good Friday. None, I think, would agree the deal envisaged by Mary Holland. - Yours, etc., Fred Cobain,
UUP Assembly Member, Parliament Buildings, Belfast 4.