INLA dumps weapons
by Ian Graham

Reuters    Translate This Article
8 February 2010

BELFAST (Reuters) - One of Northern Ireland's deadliest paramilitary groups has dumped all of its weapons in front of independent witnesses, the militants and the commission overseeing the province's disarmament process said on Monday.

Confirming what sources close to the militants told Reuters on Saturday, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) said it had got rid of all its weapons and ammunition, four months after announcing an end to its armed struggle.

'We make no apology for our part in the conflict,' Martin McMonagle, a senior member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the political wing of the INLA, told reporters.

'We believe that conditions have now changed in such a way that other options are open to revolutionaries in order to pursue and ultimately achieve our objectives.'

The INLA's formal decommissioning marks a further step in the peace process after parties agreed to a deal last week that will transfer control of police and justice powers from London to Belfast.

The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD), set up by the British and Irish governments in 1997, confirmed firearms, ammunition, explosives and explosive devices belonging to the INLA had been decommissioned.

'The INLA representatives have informed us that the arms decommissioned constitute all of those under the control of the INLA leadership,' the commission said.

All paramilitary groups have until February 14 to dispose of their weaponry and could face prosecution for any found after the deadline expires, with republican splinter groups still causing a severe threat, according to police.

'Other small militarist factions, both republican and loyalist, who are opposed to the peace process need now also to reflect on their position given the political realities of 2010 and end their futile armed actions,' said Gerry Kelly of the nationalist Sinn Fein party.

SPORADIC VIOLENCE INCREASING

Last week's deal between Sinn Fein and First Minister Peter Robinson's Democratic Unionist Party on the devolution of policing averted the collapse of their joint government and they said it could also help quell dissident factions.

Fighting between pro-British and Irish nationalist groups killed 3,600 people before a 1998 peace deal that was followed by pledges by the main militant organisations on both sides including the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to disarm.

Two major groups also disposed of their weapons in recent months but sporadic violence has slowly increased since Republican dissident groups killed two British soldiers and a policeman in March last year.

A small but ruthless splinter group, the INLA killed Margaret Thatcher's Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave with a bomb under his car in the House of Commons car park weeks before she was elected prime minister in 1979.

The INLA, politically to the left of the IRA, was involved in at least 120 murders during the decades of bloodshed. It was also responsible for killing 17 soldiers and civilians at the Droppin' Well pub in Ballykelly in the Northern Irish county of Derry three years later.

(Reporting by Ian Graham; Writing by Andras Gergely in Dublin; Editing by Randy Fabi)

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