Watchdog hails Sinn Fein move

12 April 2012

Sinn Fein's decision to endorse the Northern Ireland police is a major step forward in the IRA's move away from paramilitarism, a report has said.

As Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern prepared to review in Downing Street their plans for reviving devolution, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) gave a glowing assessment of how the Provisionals had abandoned terrorism and violence.

However, while the report stressed the organisation no longer sanctioned criminality, it noted some individuals continued to be involved in fuel laundering, smuggling and tax evasion and a small number had also considered arming themselves in defiance of their leadership.

The IMC said it was clear from Sinn Fein's decision to get involved in policing that the republican movement remained firmly committed to a strategy of pursuing its objectives only through politics.

The ceasefire watchdog said: "The decision of the ard fheis (special party conference) held on January 28, 2007 to support policing and the criminal justice system was a very major development. That decision and the efforts invested by the leadership of the republican movement in presenting the arguments in favour of the change were further substantial evidence of their commitment to the democratic process."

The four-member commission said during months of consultation about its policing plans, republican leaders encountered some resistance to its proposal to back Sir Hugh Orde's Police Service of Northern Ireland.

However this had been expressed politically rather than through violence. "Some people left the movement but we have no reason to believe that they were threatened with violence," he said.

"In addition to the two groupings we have previously mentioned - eirigi and the so-called Republican Defence Army - a new loose-knit one emerged calling itself both Republican Congress and Concerned Republicans which has focussed particularly on the issue of policing. The leadership engaged in dialogue with this grouping, as it did with the movement generally in advance of the ard fheis."

As Northern Ireland's politicians prepared for a March 7 election, the IMC report was viewed as another crucial piece of the jigsaw leading to devolution on March 26.

If power sharing is to be achieved, the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists have said they must be convinced the republican movement has turned its back on crime and terrorist activity for good and is showing on the ground support for the police, courts and the rule of law.

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