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29 June 2009

CRC Chief Executive Duncan Morrow says: ‘Putting weapons beyond use is a welcome decision by loyalist paramilitary organizations and we hope the process is taken to completion.  The threat which these weapons represented cast a shadow over the peace process and both Catholic and Protestant communities. With the armed threat gone loyalists and nationalists should be encouraged to develop better relationships between their communities and build for a shared future.’

CRC Chief Executive Duncan Morrow says:

‘Putting weapons beyond use is a welcome decision by loyalist paramilitary organizations and we hope the process is taken to completion.  The threat which these weapons represented cast a shadow over the peace process and both Catholic and Protestant communities. With the armed threat gone loyalists and nationalists should be encouraged to develop better relationships between their communities and build for a shared future.’

The One Small Step Campaign has also welcomed the decommissioning of Loyalist weapons by paramilitary organizations.

Campaign Chair Trevor Ringland says:

‘Despite the delay in coming to this point this decommissioning is welcome and further reduces the threat of paramilitary violence from which we have all suffered for much too long.   It is to be hoped that the process will now lead to the conclusion of total and final decommissioning by the UDA.  Paramilitary weaponry has no place in the new Northern Ireland and in the peace process. We must work to ensure that the attitudes and hatreds which lay behind the acquiring and use of these weapons are now also decommissioned.’

Issued on behalf of the Community Relations Council and the One Small Step Campaign by

Ray Mullan

Community Relations Council

Tel: 90-227500

Email: rmullan@nicrc.org.uk