(Brigadier General Tauno Nieminen (L), General John de Chastelain (2nd L) of Canada, the head of Northern Ireland's independent disarmament body, listen during a news conference at a hotel on the outskirts of Belfast, northern Ireland September 26, 2005. Photo: Reuters)

Related Event: Northern Ireland's Peace Process Revived

International weapons inspectors backed by Protestant and Catholic clergymen announced the Irish Republican Army's full disarmament Monday, a milestone in Northern Ireland peacemaking that drew skepticism and scorn from the province's Protestant majority.

John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general who has been working on the issue since 1997, declared that over the past week he had personally inventoried and gotten rid of a mammoth stockpile of IRA weapons, ranging from flame-throwers to surface-to-air missiles.

But the outlawed IRA, which for 12 years resisted British and Protestant demands to disarm, barred the inspectors and the two religious observers from discussing details of what had been surrendered, where it happened and the manner of its disposal.

The IRA-linked Sinn Fein hopes Monday's announcement will help the party's popularity in the neighboring Irish Republic, where it has designs on a place in the next coalition government.

The two weapons observers — one a Methodist minister, the other a Catholic priest — declined to answer specific questions on the process conducted by officials from Canada, Finland and the United States. But they described the caches as huge.

"I would lay my life on the line that the IRA has acted in good faith, and has fully disarmed," said the Rev. Alec Reid, a 74-year-old priest.

"This is a significant step in taking the gun out of Irish politics," said Reid, a confidante of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. "Now it's up to the other paramilitary groups."

Crucially, de Chastelain said he would not publish a list of what the IRA surrendered until outlawed Protestant paramilitary groups, chiefly the Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Volunteer Force, also disarm. Both the UVF and UDA, politically rudderless organizations that are less well-armed than the IRA but involved in much more violence, have said they will not disarm.

The prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, offered fulsome praise to the IRA for belatedly delivering on an important goal of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord.

"Successive British governments have sought final and complete decommissioning by the IRA for over 10 years," Blair said. "Failure to deliver it had become a major impediment to moving forward the peace process. Today it is finally accomplished. And we have made an important step in the transition from conflict to peace in Northern Ireland."

Ahern called de Chastelain and deputies from Finland and the United States "men of integrity. Their words are clear, and they are welcome."

But Ian Paisley, whose uncompromising Democratic Unionist Party holds veto power on whether to revive power-sharing with Sinn Fein, said the IRA had probably lied to the inspectors and were keeping weapons in reserve. He said the IRA's requirements for secrecy showed they had something to hide.

"There were no photographs, no detailed inventory, and no detail on the destruction of these arms. To describe today's statement as transparent would be the falsehood of the century," Paisley said.

The Democratic Unionists had demanded photographs, a detailed record and a Paisley-approved Protestant clergyman to serve as an independent witness. The IRA refused to permit photos and selected the two religious witnesses themselves: the Rev. Harold Good, a former president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, and Reid, who says he has spent the past 35 years trying to coax the IRA away from the gun.

Paisley, who runs his own Protestant denomination, dismissed the Protestant witness, Good, as "a man (whom) the IRA were happy to do the job."

On the streets of Belfast, Protestants also openly expressed their doubts.

"Peace doesn't happen in the dark. It has to happen while everyone is watching," said 43-year-old Jerry Chisam.

Britain first demanded IRA arms "decommissioning" — a vague term designed to give the IRA maximum flexibility — in 1993, billing it as the best practical way for the IRA to demonstrate it had renounced violence.

Most of the arsenal came from Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who shipped the IRA more than 130 tons of arms — including the IRA's favorite plastic explosive, Semtex — in the mid-1980s.

De Chastelain, who used the Libyans' own list of what it shipped as one base line for estimating the size of the IRA weapons supplies, said the weapons and ammunition he had disposed of roughly matched those estimates.

All the weapons were rendered "permanently inaccessible or permanently unusable," de Chastelain said, declining to be more specific.

The IRA issued its own statement, saying "the IRA leadership can now confirm that the process of putting our arms verifiably beyond use has been completed."

The decommissioning process was completed Saturday, said de Chastelain.

"We realized the importance of the work when the last rifle was counted," Good said. "There was a silent moment. It was very powerful."

Good and Reid said they were prevented from knowing where they were being taken.

Following months of criticism from the British, Irish and American governments, the IRA in July declared it would no longer seek to abolish Northern Ireland by force. The campaign claimed nearly 1,800 lives and maimed thousands more from 1970 to 1997, when the group began an open-ended truce.

The IRA said at the time that it had commanded members to "dump arms," but did not specify whether this meant every single one — leaving room for retention of firearms for crime and self-protection.

Whether IRA disarmament will inspire a revival of Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant administration — the central goal of the 1998 peace accord — remains an open question. The agreement required the IRA to disarm by May 2000.

"In life, there are no absolutes," Good said. "But at some point, you have to trust."

(Source: AP)