English - BICC

ief 22
Institutionalisation
of Decommissioning,
1996–1998:
From the
Mitchell
Principles to the
Agreement
The erosion of
pre-conditions
The International Body on
Decommissioning, chaired by George
Mitchell received submissions from
both governments and all of the
Northern Irish parties excepting the
DUP. Its report at the end of January
1996 concluded that paramilitary
organisations would not decommission
arms prior to all-party negotiations and
suggested the compromise of some
decommissioning during the process
of substantive negotiations.
This would undoubtedly be a bitter pill
for Unionists to swallow but the
Commission also recommended that
parties to negotiation should affirm
their commitment to six principles of
democracy and non-violence. These
stipulated that the parties should
commit themselves to democratic and
peaceful means of resolving issues,
support the total disarmament of
paramilitary organisations, agree that
decommissioning should be
independently verifiable, renounce the
use or threat of force as a means of
influencing negotiations, agree to abide
by the terms of any agreement and
take effective steps to oppose
‘punishment’ attacks (Irish Times, 25
January 1996).
The Unionist idea of an elected
convention also received some support
as a confidence-building measure, as
long as it was “broadly acceptable”
within the community. However, the
British government rejected the
compromise of parallel
decommissioning during talks, as the
Prime Minister saw no reason why
paramilitary groups could not
decommission prior to talks, and stated
that he would maintain the pressure on
them to do so. Instead he suggested
the Unionist-sponsored idea of an
elective body as a means to enter talks
(Irish Times, 25 January 1996).
The Republican response to the British
position was the ending of the IRA
ceasefire in mid-February 1996 with a
bomb explosion at Canary Wharf in
London, in which two people died. An
IRA statement said that the ceasefire
had originally been called on the basis
of a “clear and unambiguous
understanding” that all-party talks
would begin rapidly, but that it was
now clear that “the surrender or
22 B·I·C·C
political defeat of Irish Republicanism
was the actual agenda for the tactical
engagement by the British government
in the Irish peace initiative” (Irish Times,
16 February 1996).
In retrospect, and although it
represented a severe crisis in the peace
process, the ending of the IRA
cessation can also be seen to have
galvanised activity between the two
governments. At the end of February,
the governments announced a firm
date for all-party talks and made clear
that Sinn Fein could attend once the
IRA reinstated its ceasefire. No explicit
mention of the need for prior
decommissioning was made and
instead the need for Sinn Fein to sign
up to the six Mitchell principles was
underlined (See Box A for an excerpt
from the Mitchell report). The International
Body’s proposals for
decommissioning would also need to
be addressed at the start of
negotiations (Irish Times, 29 February
1996). Similarly, when provisional
ground rules for negotiations were
published in April, the British simply
emphasised that a ceasefire would be
necessary for Sinn Fein’s inclusion and
insisted that decommissioning would
not inevitably create a log jam (Irish
Times, 17 April 1996). John Major
expanded on this in May, asserting that
he wanted Sinn Fein to be part of
negotiations and that its route to this
lay in acceptance of the Mitchell
principles, an IRA ceasefire, and the
early discussion of the
decommissioning proposals by all the
parties. Crucially, Major stated that
agreement on how to take
decommissioning forward could be
reached “without blocking the
negotiations” (Irish Times, 16 May
1996).
Talks about talks:
Starting the Twin
Track
In early June, as multi-party talks were
about to begin, the ground rules for
negotiation agreed by the governments
seemingly pushed the notion of prior
decommissioning off the edge of the