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British army angry

over N Ireland

disarmament moves

LONDON: The British army has warned it will not take part in a "reconciliation" gesture alongside the IRA designed to put the Northern Ireland peace process back on track, newspapers reported here on Tuesday.

The Times said army chiefs were furious after Peter Mandelson, Britain's minister for Northern Ireland, made a link at the weekend between disarmament by the paramilitary Irish Republican Army (IRA) and demilitarisation of the British-ruled province.

Mandelson said London was prepared to "normalise" the security situation in the province, where some 15,000 British troops remain deployed, if the threat of conflict eased.

According to The Times and The Daily Telegraph, the IRA had proposed "a national day of reconciliation" in which the army would be expected to hand over a few weapons at the same time as the paramilitaries.

The Times quoted one army source in Northern Ireland as saying: "The army would resign en-masse."

Mandelson's office stressed here that the minister did not have any kind of weapons ceremony in mind and that any withdrawal of troops would depend on the security situation.

Speaking in Belfast on Monday, Mitchel McLaughlin, Chairman of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, hinted the IRA could disarm in conjunction with a partial withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland.

"If people are now looking around for ways in which we can back out of this cul-de-sec, it's incumbent on all of us to look at these ideas. They may not work, but let's have a look at them," he said.

The peace process stalled after Mandelson suspended a two-month-old power-sharing government in Belfast on February 11 over a lack of clear moves by the IRA to disarm.

The IRA Ñ which fought a 30-year campaign for a reunited Ireland, but is currently on ceasefire Ñ sponded by withdrawing from internationally-mediated disarmament talks.

Both the Belfast government and paramilitary disarmament were envisaged under a 1998 peace accord, aimed at ending sectarian conflict between Roman Catholic republicans and Protestant unionists, who support British rule of Northern Ireland.ÑAFP