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(Continued from page 71)
23 May 1998. The Good Friday Agreement is endorsed by over 71 per cent of the electorate in Northern Ireland and by nearly 95 per cent in the Republic.
25 June 1998. Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
29 June 1998. The Northern Ireland Office issues the detailed procedures to be followed, with respect to contacts between proscribed organisations and the Independent Commission, methods of recording and destroying arms etc., if decommissioning were to take place either by the destruction of arms by those in illegal possession of them or by those people giving information to the Commission enabling it to collect and destroy their arms itself. It was stated that, subject to Parliamentary approval, the Government intended to extend the amnesty period for dealing with arms by these methods from 26 February 1999 (the end-date set in the previous legislation) to 22 May 2000.
15 August 1998. The Real IRA bombs Omagh. Adams condemns the bombing.
1 September 1998. Adams repeats his unequivocal condemnation of the Omagh bombing and says "Sinn Féin believe the violence we have seen must be for all of us now a thing of the past, over, done with and gone". Shortly afterwards, Sinn Féin appoints Martin McGuinness to be its representative to liaise with the International Commission.
18 October 1998. Hume says on the BBC Breakfast with Frost programme:
"There is no disagreement by any party that the objective of this process is a total disarmament, a total removal of the gun from our society and that that should be done to the satisfaction of all sides, that it be done within the fixed timetable laid out in the Agreement of two years and that it be done to the satisfaction of an International Commission. And I believe that if we all now commit ourselves to working together to implement all aspects of the Agreement together that we can make substantial progress."
29 October 1998. In an article attacking Trimble for delaying setting up
the Executive because of the decommissioning issue, McGuinness says "Sinn
Féin is committed to the wholehearted implementation of the Good Friday
Agreement in all its aspects, including the provisions on decommissioning".
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