It cannot be denied that there is an element of confusion about the meaning and interpretation of the decommissioning issue within the Belfast Agreement. All of the pro-Agreement parties have signed up to decommissioning. Sinn Fein may be right to say that the Agreement doesn't insist upon decommissioning prior to the formation of the Executive, but the Ulster Unionist Party is equally right to insist that it cannot proceed until it has a guarantee that decommissioning is going to begin and be completed by May 2000. Our problem is that we find it hard to believe that the IRA is genuine about real peace. . .
Peace means an end to arms buying, training and recruitment.
The plain truth of the matter is that a few words from the IRA could transform the political situation overnight. We are not demanding surrender, but we are demanding an end to the fear, the veiled threats, the stockpiles and the uncertainty. It must not succeed. Politics must be seen to work. One could be forgiven for imagining that Mr Doherty had just returned from a holiday to the oxygen-free Planet Moonshine.