'The gun is still not out of Irish politics' says Paisley

Northern Ireland's political elite and grassroots yesterday absorbed the fact that IRA weapons decommissioning is bound to have far-reaching and profound effects on the conduct of politics.

Almost all points of the spectrum have accepted that the putting of IRA guns beyond use was a highly significant act which, though widely criticised as belated and imperfectly carried out, may signal a new era.

As if to reinforce the point that the IRA is trading its guns for plough shears, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams spent the day in County Cork at the National Ploughing Championships. Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness has meanwhile flown to the US to brief Irish-Americans there.

Sinn Fein yesterday called on the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist party to meet republicans for talks, saying the party had responded with a "predictably negative knee-jerk reaction" but should be given space to absorb "the enormity of what has taken place."

But Mr Paisley yesterday maintained a determined resistance to the proposition that decommissioning might profoundly alter the situation. Instead, he questioned whether the entire republican arsenal had been put beyond use and disparaged the priest and Protestant minister who watched the decommissioning as "IRA-nominated witnesses."

Speaking after meeting the head of the Decommissioning Commission, General John de Chastelain, the DUP leader said he was "shocked" to learn of the decommissioning procedures.

He complained: "We discovered that the witnesses turned up in the presence of the IRA. None of the commission heard from the government who the witnesses were. Nor did the government certify them - they were not appointed by the government."

Mr Paisley declared: "The more the searchlight is put on this, the more we discover that there is a cover-up. The gun is not out of Irish politics."

Mr Adams commented that the DUP reaction was "all delaying stuff, all negotiating."

The smaller Ulster Unionist party, meanwhile, took a more conciliatory stance, saying it believed a significant act had taken place. Deputy leader Danny Kennedy said he would never question the integrity or honesty of the Protestant witness, former Methodist moderator the Rev Harold Good.

Alex Attwood of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour party said after meeting General de Chastelain that his party was "more reassured."

He said of the Commission: "Everybody needs to recognise that these men are nobody's fools.

"Anybody who thinks they can make a fool of what those three men are trying to do and what the witnesses saw happen is very badly misled and misguided."

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said Unionist mistrust was natural, but said the integrity of General de Chastelain should be respected.

He added: "I wouldn't have expected Ian Paisley or the Unionists to just bowl over and welcome everything with open arms because they've got a lot of cause to be sceptical and suspicious over the behaviour of the IRA in the past."

- INDEPENDENT