Sinn Fein Sinn Féin -- Building an Ireland of Equals

SDLP leader Mark Durkan response to the IRA statement

"The Hume/Adams negotiations were about creating a totally peaceful environment. They began 18 years ago. The Good Friday Agreement required a commitment to exclusively peaceful and democratic means. That was over seven years ago. It is nearly eleven years since the first IRA cessation and eight years since the second. It is nine years since the Mitchell Principles on exclusively peaceful and democratic means and eight years since Sinn Fein affirmed them. The SDLP hopes that now at last, parties will live up to their obligations.

"The delays and foot-dragging which we have seen by all paramilitaries in living up to their obligations have only fed and encouraged anti-agreement unionism. They have let anti-Agreement unionists know that they too can proceed at a snail's pace and get away with it. The result has been damage to the Agreement, which is the best hope for progress for the people of this island.

"The SDLP hopes that any IRA statement will be clear and make a clean and total break from the past. We need to see, not just decommissioning, but an end to all criminality, an acceptance of the rule of law, and an end to standing in the way of the law. That is vital if we are to get the Agreement up and running again, to meet the standards of Irish democracy and to transform the lives of the people on this island. Also, to ensure a complete peace, we need to see real movement from loyalist paramilitaries whose violence continues. "