A Chara, - Surely the murder of Rosemary Nelson is proof to everyone that possession of weapons is not the real impediment to peace in Northern Ireland. The real impediment is a willingness to use weapons. Loyalist paramilitaries are not known to use bombs for their tactical murders, so we must assume that they developed this bomb only recently. Whether they had decommissioned guns or Semtex before now would not have influenced this. They wanted to murder Rosemary Nelson and they acquired a weapon to do it.
On the basis of this reality, one unpalatable conclusion is that Gerry Adams is right when he says that sectarianism and social injustice is the fundamental problem, rather than the possession of weapons. I do not mean for a minute to suggest that the IRA should not move to destroy its arsenal - it should do it in tandem with the evolution of republican philosophy in the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement. But the absolute insistence of David Trimble among others that decommissioning must take place before the formation of an executive ignores the reality which gave rise to Rosemary Nelson's murder.
Certainly, you can't have an armed minority retaining its weaponry indefinitely while in government; but equally you can't have a first minister who ignores the social reality of the jurisdiction he governs. Disenfranchised people, Catholic and Protestant, hate each other. They don't need any weapons to kill each other, though weapons do help. Until and unless they see change which diffuses their hatred, the killing will continue.
There is no easy answer, but there are glaring inadequacies in the approach of both sides to decommissioning. Please God this horrific and tragic murder will focus everyone's minds, publicly and privately, on the shortcomings of their behaviour. Above all, is this not what Rosemary Nelson campaigned for. - Is mise, Conor Meade,
Phibsboro, Dublin 7.