IRA vows to disarm, renounces use of violence

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – The Irish Republican Army renounced the use of violence against British rule Thursday and said it will disarm – a dramatic end to the IRA’s 35-year threat to Northern Ireland and a boost toward peacemaking.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair praised what he called “a step of unparalleled magnitude,” and leaders in Ireland and the United States also heralded the announcement as historic.

But some analysts and politicians warned that the outlawed IRA – which pointedly will not disband – left wiggle room for its members to keep some weapons and control a criminal empire in a territory where Roman Catholic and Protestant communities remain deeply divided.

Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams, who reportedly quit the IRA’s seven-man command in May after three decades, said the IRA was effectively ending its self-declared war to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom.

Thursday’s declaration followed a two-year diplomatic showdown between the IRA and its allied Sinn Fein party on the one hand, and an increasingly unified, impatient world community on the other.

From Dublin to Washington, leaders voiced hope that the IRA really is going out of business after killing 1,775 people and maiming thousands more in a dogged but doomed campaign. In all, 3,650 people have been killed in the conflict over this British territory since 1969, the year the modern “Provisional” IRA was founded in Belfast with the aim of abolishing Northern Ireland as a predominantly Protestant corner of the United Kingdom.