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Fein’s complaint that the Unionist
ministers’ post-dated resignation letters
amounted to an artificial and unilateral
deadline was a “patently false notion.
All that [ had] been asked of them
[Republicans] [ was] to fulfil the basic
democratic condition and to choose
between the party and the army”
(Belfast Telegraph, 2 February 2000).
Unionism was not alone in expressing
impatience with the unhurried
Republican approach to
decommissioning. A rather negative
report from the IICD at the end of
January curtly noted that it had
received “no information from the
IRA as to when decommissioning
[would] start.” The report also
disclosed that the UFF would not
begin decommissioning until the IRA
started to disarm. Similarly, the UVF
would not begin the process of
decommissioning until the IRA had
emphatically declared its war to be
over. The report pessimistically
concluded that, given the quantities of
arms in paramilitary hands, it would
soon be “logistically impossible” for
the IICD to complete its task by the
Belfast Agreement’s deadline of 22
May 2000 (Irish Times, 12 February
2000).
Obtuse signals from
the IRA
An IRA statement of 1 February
attempted to pour oil on these troubled
waters, but it said little; that the “peace
process was under no threat from the
IRA” was the basic gist of the message
and no mention of decommissioning
was made whatsoever (Irish Times, 2
February 2000). This obtuse IRA
statement and the negative report from
the IICD set alarm bells ringing in the
British government. Peter Mandelson
found the IRA’s position “totally
unacceptable” and held the view that
without “clarity over
decommissioning”, confidence would
quickly “ebb” from the institutions
which relied heavily on crosscommunity
trust (Statement by the
Secretary of State, 3 February 2000,
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk)
To put it more bluntly, Britain realised
that Republican failure to move on
decommissioning would force
Unionists out of the executive. Given
that Unionism had already moved from
its position of ‘no guns, no
government’, it was Republicanism’s
turn to feel the pressure. Republicans
were indeed highly irritated at the
increasing demand for
decommissioning which Adams
referred to as the “hypnotic, all
pervasive drumbeat now rising to
deafening loudness and drowning out
all other logic” (Irish News, 3 February
2000). Mandelson’s responsiveness to
Unionist concerns and willingness to
suspend the Executive if
decommissioning failed to occur, were
taken as “a slap in the face to the Sinn
Fein leadership” (Statement by Gerry
Adams, 3 February 2000, http://
cain.ulst.ac.uk). An IRA statement of 5
February showed just how far off
decommissioning appeared, as the IRA
underlined that it had “never entered
into any agreement or undertaking or
understanding at any time whatsoever
on any aspect of decommissioning”.
The IRA did however state that the
issue of arms could be “resolved”, but
not by “British legislative threats” to
suspend the institutions (Irish Times, 7
February 2000).
11 February—the
eleventh hour?
Negotiations continued in a pressure
cooker atmosphere. By 11 February,
Sinn Fein reported a new proposal
from the IRA of “enormous
significance” which they believed could
“finally resolve” the matter, although
no details of the plan were actually
40 B·I·C·C
disclosed * (Statement by Gerry Adams, 11
February 2000, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk).
However, the proposal came at the
eleventh hour of the negotiations and
was too late to prevent the suspension
of the institutions on 11 February as
Mandelson acted to prevent what he
felt was an inevitable: Unionist
evacuation from the process.
Suspending the institutions provided a
softer landing than watching Unionists
bring the peace architecture down by
resigning their posts in the absence of
progress on disarmament. Mandelson’s
prime directive at this point was to
prevent the haemorrhaging of pro-
Agreement Unionism, which he
considered to be “running on empty”
(Statement by the Secretary of State, 23
February 2000, http://cain.ulst.ac.uk).
The IRA proposal, as Mandelson
understood it, did not offer the “real
definition and clarity” necessary to
prop up the UUP (Irish Times, 12
February 2000).
However, a report issued by the IICD
in the hours after the suspension of
the Executive, did point to a significant
shift in the Republican position,
*
The details of the proposal were not disclosed
by the Republican leadership as they did not feel
that they could publicly commit to the proposal
until they had a) time to sell it to their grassroots
and b) a commitment from the British to
withdraw the legislation allowing the suspension
of the Executive. The British government were
made aware of the IRA proposal on the
morning of 11 February, although the proposal
was not made public for some months. The IRA
proposal, codenamed ‘Angel’, ran thus:
“The peace process contains the potential to remove the
causes of conflict and to deliver a durable peace if the
political will exists. This can be advanced by full
implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. In the
context of a process that will progressively and
irreversibly remove the causes of conflict, the leadership
of Oglaigh na hEireann [IRA] will initiate an internal
process subject to our constitution that will finally and
completely put IRA arms beyond use. This process will
be designed to avoid risk to the public and
misappropriation by others. The leadership of Oglaigh
na hEireann will facilitate verification of this. This will
be done in such a way to ensure public confidence and to
resolve the issue of arms in a complete and verifiable
way” (Belfast Telegraph, 20 September 2000).