Irish Protestant Group Pledges to Disarm

A mural from the loyalist terror group the Ulster Volunteer Force in North Belfast, Northern Ireland, Thursday, May, 3, 2007. The Command Staff of the Ulster Volunteer Force and Red Hand Commando announced that all its units and departments would stand down and will assume a nonmilitary, civilianized role. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) (Peter Morrison - AP)

DUBLIN, Ireland -- The Ulster Volunteer Force, an underground Protestant army that terrorized Roman Catholics for decades and committed the bloodiest attack of the Northern Ireland conflict, renounced violence Thursday and promised to evolve into a force for good.

Leaders of the British territory's Catholic minority welcomed the surprise announcement. But they also expressed skepticism, given the UVF's hate-fueled past and criminal present as well as its breaches of its own 1994 cease-fire declaration.

The British, Irish and U.S. governments all called on UVF commanders to demonstrate their sincerity by surrendering weapons stockpiles, an act completed two years ago by the rival Irish Republican Army.

"This is a real end for the Ulster Volunteer Force," said Gusty Spence, the founding father of the UVF, who read the statement to a Belfast press conference. "The steps outlined today in this statement, I truly believe, will bring us closer to the peaceful, democratic, prosperous future that all our people deserve."

UVF members killed more than 400 Catholic civilians from 1966 to 1994, the year the group called an open-ended truce. It exploded four car bombs in the neighboring Republic of Ireland that killed 33 people on May 17, 1974 _ the deadliest terror strike in four decades of sectarian bloodshed over Northern Ireland.

The UVF statement came just five days before a new Catholic-Protestant adminstration for Northern Ireland is scheduled to take office in Belfast, fulfilling the central dream of power-sharing contained in the Good Friday peace accord of 1998.

The group said Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom appeared secure because of the failure of the IRA campaign to end British control, so the UVF should help promote the best possible start for cross-community cooperation.

Spence said the UVF had abandoned recruiting, training and intelligence-gathering and all of its units "have been deactivated."

Spence, 73, said the group would "assume a non-military, civilianized role" in its working-class Protestant power bases beginning at midnight Thursday. He said it looked forward to working on community improvement projects with British government support.

Crucially, however, Spence said that while UVF commanders had placed the group's weapons "beyond reach" of its rank-and-file members, the UVF was not ready to surrender its arsenal to the disarmament program overseen by retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain.

De Chastelain, who since 1997 has been trying to persuade Northern Ireland's panoply of armed gangs to give up their weapons, said he was concerned that the UVF gave no firm commitment to open talks with him. The governments in Dublin, London and Washington backed the general.

"Today's commitments by the UVF signaling a fundamental change are very welcome. Words now need to be borne out with actions and we look forward to their full delivery," said Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.