By Brian Rowan
Monday 28, April 2008
Belfast Telegraph

The Independent Monitoring Commission is expected to deliver its next report within days — and publication will come before the US:NI Investment Conference, which is scheduled for May 7-9.

One year on from the Paisley-McGuinness political deal at Stormont, the trends in the paramilitary world are as expected, with the biggest question whether the UDA leadership can “deliver in the way the other organisations have”.

“They have a real problem,” one source commented. “And I’m not sure how soluble it is,” he continued.

Security and intelligence reports show the IRA continuing “to effectively slip away” — “not with a bang but a whimper” , a source observed.

The organisation, he said, was “gradually fading out”.

And the UVF is “doing pretty much what they said they would do” in their endgame statement of May 3 last year.

The question of the future existence of the IRA Army Council is unresolved, as is the issue of loyalist guns.

It is expected the four-man IMC will complete its assessments this week and deliver its report to the British and Irish governments for publication soon afterwards.

At their next news conference, the commissioners, Lord Alderdice, Joe Brosnan, Dick Kerr and John Grieve, are expecting questions on the future of the Commission itself — in other words, for how much longer is the IMC needed in its monitoring role?

There is no suggestion that they will offer their own “timescales” in response to that question, but they are expecting that “flag” will be “run up the pole”.

The IMC may yet be needed to help break the Stormont deadlock on the issue of the devolution of policing and justice powers — it may yet require further assessments from the commissioners to bring this issue over the line.

The DUP will want to be convinced that all IRA activities have ceased and that its structure has been dismantled.

Unfinished business for monitoring body

As the Independent Monitoring Commission prepares to deliver its next report, security writer Brian Rowan looks at the key questions it will cover

So often the IMC has been part of the storm, seen by republicans as part of the ‘securocrat’ apparatus.

There are no tremors as the IMC prepares to gives its next assessment, only a few days away.

There is a different context now — there is working politics, the war is over, weapons “beyond use” and time has passed since the Northern Bank robbery and other IRA linked actions.

The big IRA issue now has to do with its Army Council, the leadership that sits at the top of that organisation.

It is a big issue for unionists — big for the DUP, which maybe needs a “victory” to allow it to step over that policing and justice line, the win of being able to say that the Army Council has gone.

But what would that really mean?

There is a higher authority inside the structure of the IRA, what it calls the General Army Convention.

It is where the biggest decisions are made.

Whatever it is called there will be, for the foreseeable future, an IRA leadership, albeit a leadership of a different organisation.

Its role now is to prop up and support the Adams and McGuinness peace and political projects.

There is another “Council”, the UDA “Inner Council” of brigadiers that still sits in leadership over a paramilitary organisation that in recent days spoke to justify the continuing need for its weapons and explain why there would not be decommissioning.

And, in a few days’ time, when the IMC is asked, it will explain the many questions and doubts it has when it comes to the UDA.

It is not sure that the Inner Council can deliver in a way that the Army Council has — not sure that the UDA leadership has the authority to make its organisation do as it is told.

And there is maybe an argument that the IMC is still needed, for this purpose, to keep a focus and a watch on the loyalists and on the unfinished business of the UDA and the UVF.