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ally led disarmament commission. Sinn Féin and the SDLP reject this plan when it is made public in March.
1 March 1995. Gerry Adams says decommissioning would happen at the end of negotiations, not the beginning.
7 March 1995. Mayhew puts forward a three-point plan for the decommissioning of IRA weapons that would allow Sinn Féin to join political negotiations: a willingness in principle to disarm progressively, agreement on the method of decommissioning, and a start to the process.
9 March 1995. The White House announces that Adams has been invited to the President's St Patrick's Day reception and will be allowed to raise funds in the United States. At the reception, President Clinton urges those who had laid down their arms "to take the next step and begin to seriously discuss getting rid of these weapons.
4 April 1995. Clinton says: "I was very clear when the Adams visa was granted with permission to fund-raise that there must be an agreement, a commitment in good faith, to seriously and quickly discuss arms decommissioning".
15 July 1995. John Hume expresses the belief that the IRA would get rid of its weapons if the republicans were included in political talks.
2 October 1995. David Trimble suggests a Northern Ireland Assembly as a way of enabling Sinn Féin to take part in debates with unionists even though it had not fulfilled all the requirements of the Downing Street Declaration and therefore was not yet able to move into formal all-party talks.
3 November 1995. The British Government publishes a document, which had been circulated to all the political parties and to the Irish and US Governments in the previous week, proposing a twin-track approach: "all-party preparatory talks and an international independent body to consider the decommissioning issue will be convened in parallel by the two Governments".
8 November 1995. Trimble says that the British Government's proposals were not acceptable in their current form and "there is no question of any negotiations without decommissioning". The SDLP publishes suggestions, made, with Sinn Féin's sup
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