UDA to be Censored

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UDA to be Censored

October 10, 2007

By Barry McCaffrey

NORTHERN Ireland’s largest Loyalist paramilitary organization, the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), looked set to be censored once again this week after refusing to begin decommissioning its weapons.

On Tuesday at midnight a 60-day deadline, which had been imposed on the UDA to begin decommissioning its arsenal, passed without movement.

The deadline had been set by Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie in August after the UDA had been blamed for a series of violent attacks, including two gun attacks on police officers.

Ritchie had warned the UDA that she would withdraw $2.4 million government funding which had until now been used to operate a community project aimed at encouraging the Loyalist paramilitary group to move away from violence.

However, despite initial optimism of a breakthrough, it became increasingly obvious in the run up to the midnight deadline on Tuesday that the UDA was not going to decommission.

There had been some hope of a breakthrough when Ritchie and senior UDA leaders held talks last month. However, on Friday the UDA leadership issued a public statement warning that it would only decommission at a time and place of its choosing — and not at the behest of Ritchie.

On Saturday there appeared to be another slight glimmer of hope

when British Secretary of State Shaun Woodward announced that the UDA had begun “meaningful engagement” with General John de Chastelain’s decommissioning body.

However, the statement stopped short of giving any commitment that the UDA intended to begin decommissioning any time soon.

Indeed, Woodward’s intervention in the dispute was openly criticized by some politicians as a deliberate attempt to undermine Ritchie’s powers to sanction the UDA.

Ritchie even publicly admitted that she had felt pressurized by Woodward’s intervention.

But she insisted she would not be deterred from withdrawing the funding if the UDA failed to decommission.

“There is some pressure there but I have set my deadline and it is up to the minister for social development to do the monitoring and make the decision at the end of the day,” she said.

“What I will do is quite simple I will redirect funding if there is no decommissioning. My position has not changed. What I asked for on August 10 still stands.”

Then on Monday it emerged that Ritchie had received a loyalist death threat over the weekend. Police are currently investigating the threat.

Ritchie is understood to be taking the death threat seriously. Throughout the Troubles the UDA had been responsible for the murder of a number of Nationalist politicians, including members of Ritchie’s own SDLP party.

Later on Monday Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) spokesman Frankie Gallagher, whose party gives political analysis to the UDA, warned that the decommissioning issue could even derail the peace process.

Warning that Ritchie’s decommissioning ultimatum could lead to a “disastrous place,” the senior Loyalist claimed, “People have gone an extra mile.

“Everybody is trying to double their efforts to maintain the peace process and if this derails the peace process because a minister connects social need with decommissioning, then we are in a disastrous place.”

As the deadline approached at midnight on Tuesday it remained unclear just where the latest drama in the North’s peace process would end.

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