PM welcomes N Ireland disarmament
Monday February 08 2010
Gordon Brown has welcomed the latest decommissioning moves of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and urged politicians to get behind the policing and justice deal hammered out last week.
In a Commons statement, the Prime Minister announced that the last loyalist paramilitary organisation to hold arms, the South-East Antrim UDA, had this afternoon "just completed their decommissioning".
It follows earlier confirmation that the so-called Official IRA, a relatively small organisation most active in the 1970s, had destroyed its guns.
Its declaration came just two hours after a separate republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), confirmed it had disarmed.
Mr Brown said this was a "central part of moving Northern Ireland from violence to peace".
He hailed the policing and justice deal as a "significant and defining moment" and said responsibility for making it work fell on all politicians.
Tory leader David Cameron offered his full support for the devolution deal and congratulated the Prime Minister for the part he had played in achieving it.
In a statement, Mr Brown said that without the agreement, the "whole process of devolution and the peace process itself would be at risk".
He added: "This agreement is essential to securing the future because in turn it will also bring stability, investment and jobs."
