Communist Web Friday 18th February 2000 9.30pm gmt Irish Peace Process Setback Years of hard and painful political graft fashioning the Irish peace process are now under serious threat with the suspension last week of the the Northern Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly institutions and the imposition of direct rule by Westminster. The excuse for the suspension is an alleged breach of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement by the IRA which has not given up its weapons.But the timetabling of demilitarisation is not enshrined in that Agreement as the exclusive responsibility of the IRA. The Ulster Unionist Party's (UUP) demand that the IRA begin to disarm, imposing a timetable in breach of the Good Friday Agreement, excludes the overwhelming military power of the occupying British troops, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and Loyalist organisations. The Loyalist death squads have yet to decommission, and the British military have yet to begin seriously scaling down their occupation forces let alone actually to begin to decamp. In fact, it appears that the... http://www.billkath.demon.co.uk/cw/iri/iri.html
