IRA’s massive act of decommissioning?

The latest rumour doing the rounds is that the IRA has decommissioned up to 70% of its arsenal. If this proves to be reliable, it is as substantial as de Chastelain hinted yesterday. It also explains David Trimble’s apparent confidence before Tuesday that he could sell it to his party, especially if it could be presented within the context of Tony Blair’s acts of completion. It would also afford Republicans enough to prove their bona fides to some of the more sceptical within the Unionist community.

If confirmed, it follows the same pattern suggested by Liam Clarke in the Sunday Times last month.

The problem is that General and his team are the only ones who know what they’ve seen. But even he has no way of knowing what proportion of the IRA’s weapons have been decommissioned since there is no agreed inventory between the Republican paramilitaries and the security forces.

This is why Unionists are desperate to have a detailed inventory in public. Trimble and Adams are said to have been in constant phone contact over the last few days trying to come up with something that will work for both sides.

One senior commentator we spoke to was convinced that a 70% decommissioning of the IRA ordinance would be the minimum that the UUP’s sceptics would need to buy the deal.

This brings us to a key difference between the two bodies of anti-Agreement sentiment amongst Unionists. Both believe that there is no room at the top table in Northern Ireland democracy for democratically elected representatives of a party with even informal links with non-state military groups.

Where they differ is that UUP dissidents believe that the Belfast Agreement is sound but requires the IRA to wind itself up as a military force and dispose of its weapons. By contrast, the DUP believes that the Agreement can be substantially re-written to allow Sinn Fein to take seats and sit on committees, but not to take executive power.

It is just conceivable that the IRA has been convinced of this essential difference to have made a gesture of this order of magnitude. The British and Irish governments are said to be frantically looking for a way to make the details public.

Mick Fealty

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty