IRA arms handover claim

The chief constable says the IRA is probably as fit for war as ever

The amount of arms destroyed by the IRA in its three secret acts of disarmament has been quantified for the first time by a leading Northern Ireland security journalist.

The claim is made in a book which outlines what the IRA may have allowed to be revealed during negotiations in October 2003 aimed at encouraging unionists to rejoin a power-sharing government at Stormont.

A new edition of The Armed Peace, by BBC Northern Ireland's security editor Brian Rowan, details some of the negotiations at Hillsborough.

A deal to restore the devolved institutions collapsed because Ulster Unionists were unhappy with information given by the head of the decommissioning body, General John de Chastelain, about a third act of IRA decommissioning.

The general's report on 21 October confirmed the quantity of weapons put beyond use by the IRA was "considerably larger" than that which had been previously decommissioned by the republican movement.

The book says that days later, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams produced a first draft of a possible further report from the decommissioning body.

General de Chastelain returned to Canada after the negotiations

Mr Rowan says it would have disclosed that weaponry destroyed so far would have kept the IRA's campaign going for several years at the same level experienced at the height of the Troubles.

The text would have required IRA approval, but it never got that far.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who was involved in the negotiations, told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the move was unacceptable.

General de Chastelain, who was not aware of the negotiations, left for Canada the following day.

But the book also reveals that Sinn Fein had already received a pledge from the British Government several weeks earlier that an election to Northern Ireland's power-sharing assembly would go ahead.

Also in the book, the Northern Ireland Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, says the IRA is probably as fit for war as ever.

"From a policing perspective, we need to be convinced that they've gone away for ever, certainly before the normalisation agenda kicks in," says Mr Orde.

"My advice to the government at the moment is that we don't see those conditions. Therefore, I don't see normalisation as a debating point."

Speaking on Wednesday, the Secretary of State, Paul Murphy, said he did not disagree with Mr Orde's assessment.

"In terms of the sort of normalisation that we saw in the joint declaration last year, which would mean a much speedier normalisation, then that of course is conditional upon the level of threat or security that exists here in Northern Ireland and they are important issues," he said.

"Of course we have to look all the time at what the level of threat is."