The Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, has expressed confidence that the IRA will honour its commitment to put in place a confidence-building measure demonstrating that its arms remained securely dumped.
After the Hillsborough deal in early May the IRA issued a statement saying that "within weeks" it would meet this commitment. It said it would resume contact with Gen John de Chastelain's decommissioning body and would allow a number of its arms dumps to be examined by two international inspectors, Mr Martti Ahtisaari and Mr Cyril Ramaphosa.
Six weeks have elapsed and there is growing concern among pro-Belfast Agreement unionists that the IRA might not carry out its undertaking. This prompted Mr Mandelson to try to assuage those anxieties.
"I believe those commitments will be fulfilled. They were honestly and sincerely gone into and signed up to," he said yesterday.
Mr Mandelson also attempted to address nationalist complaints about the Police Bill diluting key elements of the Patten report on police reform. The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, said yesterday that recent comments by the Northern Secretary had gone some way towards dealing with those concerns but had not gone far enough.
He intimated that the chief reason Mr Martin McGuinness travelled to the United States yesterday was to lobby senior White House officials, senators and Congress members to use their influence with the British government to ensure the Patten report was implemented in full.
Mr Mandelson said he was determined to create a police service that would be a model for the rest of the world. "We have to make all sorts of judgment calls to strike the right balance in implementing the Patten report, which I am determined to do," he added.
Mr Mandelson condemned the violence in Lurgan on Saturday, when masked nationalist youths attacked the British army and RUC during and following an Orange Order parade. Mr Mandelson said that he would not tolerate anyone "injecting their particular form of violence into these tense situations".
