Downing Street Says » Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) Report

» Tuesday, October 3, 2006

Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) Report

Asked if the Prime Minister would be saying anything tomorrow on the IMC report, the PMOS said that he expected that the Prime Minister would say something tomorrow afternoon after the report had been published. This would be a significant report. We hoped it would provide a definitive answer to the question of whether the IRA campaign in all its forms was finally over. We would not be prejudging the IMC report, but it would be important to read the report and see what it said on that question. The report would lay the basis for the talks next week in St Andrews.

Put that the Unionists were asking what was the point of the IRA command and control structure existing if it’s campaign was over, the PMOS said that he would be better able to discuss that tomorrow after the IMC report had been published. Asked about Lord Morrow’s comments suggesting that Sinn Fein were not fit for government, the PMOS said that it was important, at this stage, to deal with the objective assessment of the IMC. They had approached their work in a painstaking and objective way and we all had to listen to what they had to say. In the past they had not been afraid to say where they thought things were wrong.

Asked whether we wanted to see an end to all paramilitary activity but not an end to the command structure before devolving power, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had himself set out the criteria on several occasions in his Harbour Commissioners speech and in the Joint Declaration of the two governments. In those we had set out that we needed an end to all paramilitary activity. It needed to be clear that there was no intention to resume paramilitary activity and it also needed to be clear that all criminal activity associated with paramilitarism had come to an end. It was for the IMC to judge against those criteria how the IRA had responded to that and the statements made by Gerry Adams in 2005.

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