Gen John de Chastelain will officially confirm today that the IRA has fully and verifiably decommissioned its weapons. This paves the way for a return to viable political negotiations aimed at restoring devolution to Northern Ireland, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
This morning Gen de Chastelain will formally notify the British and Irish governments that he has overseen the IRA putting beyond use its huge stockpiles of Kalashnikovs, Semtex explosives, mortars, machine guns and other weaponry.
"I am confident that tomorrow will bring the final chapter on the issue of IRA arms," Sinn Féin's chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said last night. "I believe that Ireland stands on the cusp of a truly historic advance and I hope that people across the island will respond positively in the time ahead," he added.
This afternoon in the Culloden Hotel just outside Belfast Gen de Chastelain will join his colleagues, Andrew Sens and Brig Tauno Nieminen in the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to publicly announce that after more than 30 years the Provisional IRA has disarmed.
A Catholic and a Protestant cleric will also issue statements in the hotel confirming that they can verify that disarmament took place. They are understood to be Redemptorist priest Fr Alex Reid, who was an important go-between in the lead-up to the 1994 IRA ceasefire, and former Methodist president the Rev Harold Good.
At the British Labour Party conference in Brighton on Wednesday, Northern Secretary Peter Hain is expected to announce a number of unionist confidence-building measures aimed at persuading the DUP to at least adopt a guarded, non-dismissive response to the IRA move.
Mr Hain is due to announce the appointment of a victims' commissioner, rate relief for Orange Order halls and financial support for Ulster-Scots culture. "All the announcements around IRA decommissioning will be completed by Wednesday at the latest," a senior source told The Irish Times.
Mr McGuinness, who is travelling to Washington tomorrow, has portrayed this IRA decommissioning, which was promised in the IRA's July 28th statement announcing the end of its armed campaign, as even more historically and politically significant than the IRA ceasefire of 1994. The British and Irish governments hope that over a reasonable period of time the DUP will engage in negotiations with Sinn Féin, leading to a restoration of the Northern Executive and Assembly by sometime next year, or possibly by 2007.
Key to creating the conditions for talks next year is that unionist politicians and the unionist community believe that IRA activity is over and that disarmament is completed.
DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson said that the IRA must "maximise the transparency" of decommissioning.
Republican, Dublin and London sources have indicated that, unlike the decommissioning event of October 2003, when the IRA prevented Gen de Chastelain disclosing details of what weapons were put beyond use, the IRA this time will be more transparent.
On RTÉ's This Week programme yesterday Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern was asked would this be "full and final" IRA decommissioning. "From everything that I have heard and from everything that I have understood from our own security services, yes, the answer to that question is yes," he replied. Mr Hain said it should be possible to make political progress after IRA decommissioning.
Unionists, however, had to be convinced that IRA activity had ended and the organisation had genuinely put all its weapons beyond use. "It's got to be credible. People have got to see that there's the biggest dumping of arms and the getting rid of the IRA's arsenal than ever before," he told the BBC's Politics Programme yesterday. Mr Hain said there was much distrust and suspicion, particularly among unionists, about the IRA's intentions. "Once they know it's credible and clear, then I think we can move forward," he said.