IRA gives up arms

Belfast, U.K.

The Irish Republican Army has destroyed all its guns and explosives, an international monitoring team said this week. The monitors, led by retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain, included representatives from Northern Ireland’s Protestant and Catholic communities. British estimates had put the IRA arsenal at more than 600 assault rifles, 800 handguns, and 2 tons of the plastic explosive Semtex. “We are satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA’s arsenal,” the team said in a statement. But Protestant leaders were skeptical, and said that any talks on reviving a joint Protestant-Catholic assembly to govern Northern Ireland shouldn’t begin until the monitors’ full report comes out, next January.

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