wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Irish church leaders welcome IRA's arms 'decommissioning'

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8942 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05528
Sept. 29, 2005

Irish church leaders welcome 
IRA's arms 'decommissioning'  

by Ray McMenamin
Ecumenical News International  

DUBLIN - Two prominent Northern Ireland clergymen chosen to monitor a key
part of an internationally-backed peace process say that, "beyond any shadow
of doubt," the arms of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) have now been put
beyond use.  
  
	The clerics, the Rev. Harold Good, a Methodist, and the Rev. Alec
Reid, a Roman Catholic priest, witnessed the IRA's recent act of
decommissioning, in which the armed group put all its remaining weapons down,
after decades of violent struggle.   
  
	However, the Rev. Ian Paisley, the founder of the Free Presbyterian
Church and leader of the largest political party in Northern Ireland, the
Democratic Unionists, rejected the declaration on Sept. 27.
  
	Paisley said, "(The IRA's decommissioning) illustrates more than ever
the duplicity and dishonesty of the two (British and Irish) governments and
the IRA." He said the clerics who witnessed the decommissioning "were
approved by the IRA and therefore ... in no way could be independent."	
  
	The largely Roman Catholic IRA waged a violent campaign between 1969
and 1997 against British rule in Northern Ireland. In July 2005 the IRA
ordered its members "to assist the development of purely political and
democratic programs through exclusively peaceful means."  
  
	In Belfast, Rev. Good, a former president of his denomination in
Ireland, said: "We wish to assure everyone, and especially those in Northern
Ireland, that decommissioning is now an accomplished fact."  
  
	The process was agreed as part of the Belfast Agreement, the accord
brokered between the British and Irish governments and most of Northern
Ireland's political parties and signed on Good Friday 1998. Retired Canadian
Gen. John de Chastelain was appointed to oversee the process; he reported on
Sept. 26 that the IRA had put its entire arsenal beyond use.  
  
	The clergymen appointed to monitor the process said: "We are certain,
utterly certain, about the exactitude of this report, because we have spent
many days watching the painstaking way General de Chastelain went about the
task."	
  
	The Rev. Harry Uprichard, the moderator of Northern Ireland's largest
denomination, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, said: "The final act of
decommissioning by the IRA is welcome, and I acknowledge it as most helpful
in the present situation."  
  
	Ireland's Roman Catholic bishops, speaking in advance of their
September general meeting in Maynooth, said: "This represents an immensely
significant confidence-building measure in favor of a more peaceful and
stable society in Northern Ireland."  
  
	Describing the event as "a massive step," the leader of the
(Anglican) Church of Ireland, Archbishop Robin Eames, said, "It can become a
major step towards a peaceful and just society if it heralds the end of all
criminality and violence in future."

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