Next week's deadline for loyalist paramilitaries to disarm will not be shifted, a Stormont Minister pledged today.
Margaret Ritchie warned the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) that her threat to withhold £1.2 million (€1.7 million) of funding unless the group dumps its weapons by next Tuesday still holds.
The Social Development Minister insisted the onus was now on the UDA and its advisers in the Ulster Political Research Group.
"The deadline stands. There was never any question of it being moved. It is still October 9th, whether I am in Belfast, Dublin or Brussels [on that day]," she said,
"If they [the UDA] don't fulfil this requirement I will have to redirect the money into other programmes in loyalist, Protestant areas to tackle disadvantage. I have made it very clear, the ball is clearly in the UDA and UPRG's [Ulster Political Research Group] court to deliver."
Mrs Ritchie set loyalists a 60-day target for decommissioning before she cut a three-year Conflict Transformation Initiative funding programme for working class Protestant areas.
PA