The British army began closing or demolishing three military installations in the Irish Republican Army's rural heartland in a rapid response to the IRA's declaration to renounce violence and disarm

The work to withdraw from three positions in the South Armagh borderland follows IRA commanders' directive to their units Thursday to dump their weapons and use "exclusively peaceful means."

The breakthrough was the product of a two-year diplomatic showdown between the IRA and its allied Sinn Fein party, on the one hand, and increasingly impatient British, Irish and U.S. governments that demanded the IRA's full disarmament and disbandment, in effect if not in name.

Britain, which also paroled an IRA mass murderer Wednesday as part of the emerging new agreement, agreed to close down an army base in the South Armagh village of Forkhill; a hilltop tower near Camlough Mountain with commanding views of surrounding hamlets and roads; and a tall tower in Newtownhamilton, the only South Armagh village with a substantial Protestant minority.

In Thursday's statement, the IRA said its representative would reopen talks immediately with John de Chastelain, a retired Canadian general who since 1997 has been trying to disarm the IRA and Northern Ireland's myriad other outlawed gangs.

The IRA said it hoped to complete the disposal of its weapon stockpiles "as quickly as possible" and would allow Catholic and Protestant clergy to witness the disarmament work. The IRA surrendered unknown amounts of arms in 2001, 2002 and 2003 amid total secrecy, fuelling Protestants' suspicions they were being conned.

The British, Irish and American governments have stressed that the central goal of Northern Ireland's Good Friday peace accord of 1998 - a stable Catholic-Protestant administration - simply would never happen unless the IRA disbanded in fact, if not in name.

Their conclusion followed the collapse in 2002 of a moderate-led coalition amid chronic arguments over IRA activities and weapons stockpiles. Sinn Fein had two of 12 posts in that coalition, but would be the major Catholic part of any future coalition because of its growing vote.

(Source:AFP)