Disarmament – 1998
1998
The Good Friday Agreement provided for the establishment of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to monitor, review, and verify the total disarmament of all paramilitary organizations. The deadline for completing the disarmament was May 2000. The Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Act (1997), which received Royal Assent on 27 February 1997, had a provision in Article 7 for the establishment of an independent decommissioning commission. The act was enacted before the accord was signed in 1998. Therefore, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning was already established when the accord was signed and was headed by Canadian General John de Chastelain.1 The disarmament, however, did not start in 1998. The Unionists and the Republicans differed on the interpretation of the wording on decommission as the Republicans claimed that they had no formal links with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and therefore were not in a position to influence the IRA. The decommissioning issue delayed the formation of the power-sharing executive: David Trimble from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) refused to form the government after the July 1998 elections,2“The Good Friday Agreement — Decommissioning,” BBC News, May 2006, accessed January 31, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/schools/agreement/policing/decommis… so decommissioning did not begin in 1998.