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Countries urge IRA to reject violence
British and Irish leaders on Monday called on the Irish Republican Army to unequivocally reject violence and commit to the democratic process. That's the key, they said, to building trust between Catholics and Protestants, and restoring Northern Ireland's own government. "The issue for months now has been trust and confidence and being able to build that up again," Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said at a joint news conference with British leader Tony Blair. "If you get a clear and decisive statement about the IRA's intentions, that allows us to positively move forward, if it is a statement that carries the necessary credibility," Ahern said. Northern Ireland's Good Friday peace accord of 1998 proposed the creation of a joint Catholic-Protestant administration involving Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that represents most of the province's Catholics. A power-sharing government collapsed in 2002 following chronic arguments over IRA activities and weaponry. "I want to see the executive back up and running as soon as possible. It does depend ... critically on the credibility of what is done," Blair said. The Democratic Unionist Party, which represents most of the territory's British Protestant majority, says it won't cooperate with Sinn Fein unless the IRA disarms, disbands and ceases all threatening activities. In particular, the Rev. Ian Paisley, who leads the DUP, has demanded the publication of photos of IRA disarmament. The IRA rejected those terms in December and since has been implicated in a string of criminal scandals, including a world-record bank robbery, the knife slaying of a Catholic man and a money-laundering network. "What is important is that the republican movement pursues its aims by exclusively democratic and peaceful means, and that means an end to all violence and all preparations for violence," Blair said. Blair said earlier Monday that if the IRA did give up violence, the onus would then be on Paisley to share power with Sinn Fein. "Political progress has achieved a lot in Northern Ireland, and we've got to go on and make it achieve more," he said. "It will be difficult, but if it is done and it is done genuinely and violence is genuinely given up, then the obligation then transfers to Unionists to make sure that they drop their opposition to going into a power-sharing executive."
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