Republican News · Thursday 25 October 2001

IRA's courageous leadership

It may be somewhat hackneyed to talk of leaps of faith in this peace process, but the IRA's decision this week to put arms beyond use can truly be described as historic.

The IRA entered this process as, and remains, an undefeated army, an army of the people.

The IRA has chosen, yet again, to be braver and bigger than its adversaries. It has chosen to liberate the peace process.

What is now required is that other parties to the process display similar courage and generosity. The onus is particularly on the British government to live up to the commitments it made in the Good Friday Agreement.

As Gerry Kelly said on Tuesday in response to the IRA statement, peacemaking is a very difficult task, but this initiative has the capacity to rekindle the hope, vision and expectation of the Good Friday Agreement.

It is now up to all of us to capitalise on this new situation and work together to show that politics can work.

Tiocfaidh ár lá.

UDA must desist

As we go to print, loyalists have blockaded a further three Catholic schools in North Belfast, preventing nationalist parents from bringing their children home from school.

This is a further escalation in an ongoing and vicious sectarian campaign across the Six Counties but with its poisonous heart in North Belfast.

That campaign has been cynically orchestrated by the UDA, an organisation at least as concerned with drugs and rackets as it is with attacking Catholics. Gerry Adams called tonight on loyalists to end their attacks on Catholics. They must stop now.