As the world welcomed the Irish Republican Army's (IRA) words, the people whose reaction most mat-ters -- Ulster's unionists -- greeted the statement with a mixture of skepticism and hostility.
Ian Paisley, the leader of the now dominant Democratic Unionist party, said he would judge the IRA on their deeds, not their words.
"Even on the face of the statement, they have failed to explicitly declare an end to their multimillion-pound criminal activity and they have failed to provide the level of transparency that will be necessary to truly build confidence that the guns have gone in their entirety," he said. "We treat with contempt their attempt to glorify and justify their murder campaign."
PHOTO: AP
But hardline as his words were, the unionists' reaction was much more muted than might have been expected. Fire and brimstone usually accompanies such events, but even the new Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey, who now has to beat the "no surrender" drum that Paisley has played so effectively for decades, could not dismiss the IRA statement completely out of hand.
He said "actions speak louder than words," suggesting he would wait for the ceasefire watchdog to judge whether the IRA really had ceased its activities.
Empey claimed the statement left fundamental questions unanswered: "Where is the confirmation of the disbandment of the IRA? What evidence will the unionist community see that all weapons have been destroyed?"
Even south of the border -- where the statement was greeted very warmly, although not unconditionally, by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern -- skeptical noises were made. Amid a general mood of celebration and relief, the Irish justice minister, Michael McDowell, who has become something of a hate figure for republicans, sounded a sour note.
Addressing young Garda recruits at their training center, he said if the IRA were sincere, they had to give back the ?26.5 million proceeds of the Northern Bank robbery in December.
He said the issue of their "criminal assets" would not "go away" and the IRA was still an illegal organization.
"Fundamentally, it is subversive of our Constitution and as long as that is the case it will remain proscribed," he said.
He was going to beef up the investigation into money laundering.
John Hume, the former leader of the moderate nationalist SDLP and the chief architect of the peace process, said: "Seven years after the Good Friday agreement it is about time that all violence ended so that all our people can live free of fear."
A source from the Ulster Defence Association, the largest loyalist paramilitary group, insisted: "If people think loyalism is just going to follow suit, it's a non-event. There's an awful lot of dialogue to get through."
The reaction from many of the IRA's old comrades was equally as hostile. Tony McPhillips of Republican Sinn Fein, the political wing of dissident republicans, said the statement was a sellout.
After 800 years, the British were still in Ireland, there was still partition and Sinn Fein had entered into government and turned themselves into "Uncle Toms for the British," he said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS