Intelligence

Paisley accuses de Chastelain of a cover-up

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online

By Jenny Booth

Unknown numbers of IRA weapons have ended up in the hands of splinter groups and no-one can say that all have been decommissioned, the Reverend Ian Paisley said today.

The veteran loyalist leader said that he had gone into a meeting with General John de Chastelain and his arms monitors this morning with serious questions about their statement that the IRA had disarmed.

The arms monitors reported yesterday that they had seen the destruction of weaponry which matched the estimates of both British and Irish governments.

But Mr Paisley said that he emerged from the meeting "shocked about what we learnt", and he accused the monitors of colluding in a cover-up.

He said the intelligence estimates used by members of the International Independent Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to judge whether all the IRA weapons were gone had been revised.

"The more spotlight is put on this, the more we discover there is a cover-up," said Mr Paisley after he and Democratic Unionist Party colleagues spent over an hour with Gen de Chastelain.

"Even the security forces admit that some of the weapons that were in the original lists are now given to other dissident organisations, and that is very serious.

"Part of the weapons that should have been decommissioned have disappeared, and the security forces admit they are probably in the hands of dissidents."

He said even the weapons estimate used had an upper and lower tolerance - but the general had refused to disclose whether weapons actually decommissioned met the higher or lower level.

He said they "got the greatest surprise of all" when they discovered that improvised weapons were not covered on the intelligence lists.

Mr Paisley said: "These things put a question, a very big question, over what has taken place. When we came to any question which could unravel what needs to be unravelled and could put some light on these things, they refused to give us any answers."

He cast doubts on the impartiality of the Catholic and Methodist churchmen who acted as independent witnesses, saying he was told that they had been nominated neither by the Government nor the decommissioning body. "They were the IRA’s nominated witnesses," he said.

He rubbished the claims by the Rev Harold Good, a former Methodist President, and Father Alec Reid that they were satisfied all IRA arms had been destroyed.

He said that General de Chastelain had told him that the independent witnesses had not seen security estimates of weapons held by the terrorist group, and so could not know if the arms they saw destroyed were all there were.

The DUP leader said there was nonsense being trotted out about the gun having been taken out of Irish politics. "The gun is not out of Irish politics," he said.

Mr Paisley's suspicion is likely to delay the return of power-sharing devolved government at Stormont. Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, today held out the hope that if the Independent Monitoring Commission on paramilitary activity gave the IRA the all-clear next January, talks towards a resumption of devolution should take place.

But Mr Paisley made plain he will not be pressured into forming a government with Sinn Fein when "they couldn’t give a clean bill of health to the IRA".

Asked whether he could see himself in government with Sinn Fein, he said simply: "We will not be doing it."

General de Chastelain and his two fellow commissioners is also due to meet the Ulster Unionists, SDLP and Alliance parties today. The job of kick-starting the Northern Ireland peace process rests with convincing voters in the province that total decommissioning happened.

Overnight, the White House welcomed the IRA’s move as an "important first step" and the US State Department called on all paramilitary groups, both loyalist and republican, to work with Gen de Chastelain to bring about complete decommissioning.

A White House spokesman, Sean McCormick, said that the US "remains steadfast in its support for the peace process to achieve lasting peace and reconciliation for the people of Northern Ireland".

Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein chief negotiator, was today travelling to the United States to brief the Bush Administration and republican sympathisers.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said that republicans had mixed views about the decommissioning. Some were proud that the IRA had acted, some were apprehensive, and others were frustrated at the reaction of Mr Paisley.

"It’s a bit like waiting for a death in the family - even though you are expecting it, it still gives you a gunk," he said.

"We can mess about over all of this, but at the end of the day are they saying that de Chastelain and the other commissioners are liars? Are they saying that Harold Good is a liar? Are they saying Father Alex Reid is a liar? Is that what it amounts to?"

September 27, 2005 at 05:01 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home