IRA agrees to overlook Trimble `mistake'

NORTHERN IRELAND'S disparate new cabinet settled into office yesterday after all the history-making of Monday, the 10 new ministers meeting their staff and bedding themselves into the bureaucracy.

As they did so, the IRA issued a statement complaining that the First Minister, David Trimble, had stepped outside the terms of the Mitchell review at the weekend in selling the devolution package to his party. Mr Trimble's recalling of his Ulster Unionist Council next February to reconsider the decommissioning issue was outside the terms of the agreement he had reached with republicans, the IRA said. It confirmed that it would appoint a go- between with the International Commission on Decommissioning on Thursday, once devolution "goes live".

As ministers assumed the trappings of office, the Commons and the Lords in Westminster were occupied with the constitutional technicalities that will precede tomorrow's transfer of power to the new Belfast executive.

In Belfast, most attention was concentrated on Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator during the peace process, whose appointment as Minister of Education in the devolved government generated political shockwaves. The elevation of a one-time street fighter who left school at 15 has caused a general stir.

Yesterday he sought to assure doubters that he did not see his new post in sectional terms, saying that because his community had been discriminated against for many years, the last thing he wished to do now was discriminate. He said he had benefited from "the political education of a lifetime".

In the Lords, the Northern Ireland minister Lord Dubs said devolving power represented the triumph of normal democratic politics over violence.

Downing Street was silently confident that the handover would go without a hitch. The order devolving power will be given Royal Assent today, and the final transfer of power to the new executive will take place at midnight.

As the Northern Ireland Appointed Day Order began its passage through Parliament, two former secretaries of state for Northern Ireland, Lords Merlyn-Rees and Mayhew of Twysden, joined peers from all sides in supporting the measure without a vote. The SDLP leader Lord Fitt (Ind) did not believe Mr McGuinness "would discriminate in any way in favour of a religious sect in Northern Ireland".

The former Tory frontbencher Baroness Blatch urged Peter Mandelson, the Northern Ireland Secretary, to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mr Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, if there was no progress on decommissioning by February.

Lord Mayhew said the leap towards peace had "saved the people of Northern Ireland, for a short time at least and in any event, from a poisonous political stalemate and it offers them an enormous opportunity". Lord Dubs said a new British-Irish treaty would come into force today, putting new north-south institutions in place from tomorrow.

Lord Dubs said that although there was scepticism about the decommissioning of weapons by paramilitary groups and concern about what the government would do if it did not happen, he believed it would take place.

"We have said throughout that we want devolution and decommissioning and we hold to that view. Let's give it a chance," he urged. "I hope that, whatever their misgivings, people, whether members of the public or political representatives, will now join in operating the new institutions for the common benefit."

David Aaronovitch,

Review, page 3