Priest says Loyalist contentions on IRA weapons could endanger pact

Published: 2005-09-28

MANCHESTER, England (CNS) -- The priest who played a central role in the decommissioning of the Irish Republican Army arsenal warned that Loyalist insistence on photographic evidence could endanger the agreement to get rid of the weapons. Redemptorist Father Alex Reid, 74, whose parents were in the IRA, said the disposal of weapons meant Republicans, primarily Catholics, have finally abandoned physical resistance in favor of peaceful means. Father Reid, who lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and the Rev. Harold Good, a former president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, were official witnesses to the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, which spent two months accepting weapons held in secret arms dumps across Ireland and Northern Ireland. However, because no photographs were taken of the weapons being destroyed, some in the Loyalist or Protestant community do not believe the IRA has fully ended its campaign of violence.

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