SDLP Minister for Social Development Margaret Ritchie has expressed disappointment at a UDA statement yesterday indicating the loyalist paramilitary organisation will not meet her deadline of Tuesday midnight for the group to begin disarmament.
Ms Ritchie said that notwithstanding the UDA statement suggesting it would choose its own time to start decommissioning, her deadline still held.
If the UDA does not begin decommissioning by then, funding of £1.2 million will be withheld from a loyalist conflict transformation initiative, she has made clear. She indicated last night that if the money was not awarded, it would be redirected to loyalist communities through other avenues.
Ms Ritchie said she understood that the UDA yesterday met General John de Chastelain's decommissioning body. "That is the setting for these issues to be hammered out," she said.
The UDA yesterday issued a short but somewhat unclear statement. "The Ulster Defence Association has always intended, as part of the continued process of consultation with its membership, and has agreed a course of action and a timetable for this action," it said. "It will adhere to that timetable, no more and no less," the statement added.
The UDA in the actual statement did not specify what it "intended" to do but loyalist sources said the statement should be interpreted as meaning it would decommission and possibly remove itself to the sidelines, when it so chose.
Ms Ritchie issued her ultimatum to the UDA in August after it was involved in serious rioting in Carrickfergus and Bangor. Trouble between the mainstream UDA and a breakaway grouping in south-east Antrim erupted again recently.
However, Methodist minister the Rev Harold Good, who with Redemptorist priest, the Rev Alec Reid, oversaw IRA decommissioning, told The Irish Times Ms Ritchie should reconsider her deadline based on contact he had with the UDA's south Belfast "brigadier", and one of the organisation's most powerful figures, Jackie McDonald.
Mr Good said the UDA told him it was planning "something significant" for Remembrance Day on November 11th. He believed that Ms Ritchie should at least test whether the UDA was genuine.
It was initially expected that Ms Ritchie would make a statement on withholding the funding by Wednesday next if, as it says, the UDA didn't meet Tuesday's midnight deadline. However, Ms Ritchie will be in Brussels next week at a European Union promotional event for Northern Ireland.
This raised speculation that Ms Ritchie was in effect extending the deadline. This was not so, she said yesterday.
Her statement on the funding is now expected the week after next, which would provide more time for the UDA to consider whether it should provide a stronger commitment to disarm.
