OWN CORRESPONDENT, London | Monday 12.45pm.
FORMER South African politician Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and former South African politician Cyril Ramaphosa met British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday at the start of an IRA arms monitoring mission crucial to peace in Northern Ireland.
The two men met Blair in his Downing Street office before heading to Belfast to start work. They expect soon to have access to several Irish Republican Army arms dumps, thought to be in the Irish Republic.
Their inspection of the dumps is seen as a key test of the IRA’s commitment to peace and vital to persuading the British province’s Protestant majority that the guerrilla group, which draws support from the Catholic minority, can be trusted.
Ahtisaari and Ramaphosa, once a leading figure in South Africa’s ruling African National Congress, declined to give journalists details of their hour-long meeting with Blair.
”Have some patience, like we do,” Ahtisaari said.
Northern Ireland’s main Protestant party, the Ulster Unionist Party, wants assurances on IRA weapons and other issues before meeting on Saturday to decide whether it will return to a power-sharing, home-rule government with Catholics.
Ahtisaari and Ramaphosa were appointed last week shortly after the IRA, which wants to end British rule of Northern Ireland, announced it was prepared to put its arms ”completely and verifiably beyond use”.
Britain and Ireland see the IRA statement as the best hope yet of breaking a long-running deadlock over weapons that has held up implementation of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord to end three decades of sectarian violence.
Under the IRA offer, Ahtisaari and Ramaphosa will inspect the guerrillas’ arms in sealed, hidden bunkers. –Reuters