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(Continued from page 72)
10 November 1998. When it is put to him in a BBC radio interview that Sinn Féin spokesmen "never come up with a really good reason as to why some sort of handover of some kinds of weapons cannot take place", Martin McGuinness replies: "Well I'll give you a good reason. The IRA won't do it. That's the reason."
14 November 1998. Seamus Mallon tells the SDLP's annual conference that nothing in the Good Friday Agreement requires decommissioning to begin before Sinn Féin accedes to the Executive and that he believes Sinn Féin intends to honour its obligations under the Agreement to decommission within two years. But should they not do so the SDLP "would rigorously enforce the terms of the Agreement and remove from office those who had so blatantly dishonoured their obligations". He believes that the fears of Sinn Féin supporters that whatever they do the unionists will contrive new demands and conditions to exclude them from executive office are also unfounded, but, if there were any such attempt, neither the SDLP nor he as Deputy First Minister "would confer any compliance, support or credibility on such a blatant contravention of the Agreement".
10 December 1998. John Hume and David Trimble are jointly presented with the Nobel peace prize in Oslo. In his acceptance speech, Trimble says:
I have not pressed the paramilitaries on the details of decommissioning. Although I am under pressure from my own political community I have not insisted on precise dates, quantities and manner of decommissioning. All I have asked for is a credible beginning. All I have asked for is that they say that the "war" is over. And that is proved by such a beginning. That is not too much to ask for. Nor is it too much to ask that the reformist party of nationalism, the SDLP, support me in this."
11 December 1998. According to briefings to journalists by republican sources, the IRA rules out decommissioning for the foreseeable future.
18 December 1998. The Loyalist Volunteer Force, a small paramilitary organisation with no corresponding political party, hands in some of its weapons for destruction by the Commission.
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