N. Ireland Protestant Group Vows to Renounce Violence

LONDON, May 3 -- The Ulster Volunteer Force, a Protestant paramilitary organization responsible for more than 500 deaths during Northern Ireland's three-decade sectarian war, announced Thursday that it was renouncing violence, a new step toward lasting peace in the troubled province.

The surprise statement came five days before Protestant and Catholic legislators are scheduled to form a power-sharing provincial government in Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital. Next week, once-bitter rivals in a conflict that claimed more than 3,600 lives are to sit together to deliberate on local issues such as roads and schools.

As of midnight Thursday, the UVF and its affiliated Red Hand Commando group was to "assume a non-military, civilianised, role," according to a statement read at a Belfast news conference by Gusty Spence, 73, who helped form the group in 1966 and was convicted of murder the same year.

"All recruitment has ceased. Military training has ceased. Targeting has ceased. . . . All ordnance has been put beyond reach," Spence said. "We reaffirm our opposition to all criminality and instruct our volunteers to cooperate fully with the lawful authorities in all possible instances."

The announcement follows disarmament by the Irish Republican Army, the main Catholic paramilitary group, in 2005.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said the UVF step signaled "fundamental change." A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the announcement evidence that "the peace process has worked" but cautioned that "as with statements from other paramilitary groups in the past, we await to see it delivered in action."

Many officials continued to worry Thursday that dissident members of the UVF, as with the IRA, would continue to pursue criminal activity. There was also concern about the status of the group's weapons.

The statement's wording that they had been put "beyond reach" was taken in Belfast to mean that they had not been destroyed but would be kept from rank-and-file members.

The IRA often spoke of putting its weapons "beyond use," wording that it never defined in the highly secretive disarmament process but that was interpreted to mean destruction or disablement. Also, while the IRA had independent monitors confirming that its weapons were in fact put "beyond use," the UVF has not shown monitors its smaller arsenal.

The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, which oversees weapons decommissioning in Northern Ireland, issued a statement Thursday saying that "without the commission's involvement, their action on arms does not meet the requirement" set out in the 1997 British law establishing the commission. "We are ready to meet the UVF representative to discuss how we can work together in dealing with arms."

Paul Bew, a professor of Irish politics at Queen's University in Belfast, said some people will see the weapons language as "a disappointment element." Nonetheless, he said, the UVF pledge is "significant, another critical step in the peace process."

Spence said the UVF made its decision "against a backdrop of increasing community acceptance that the mainstream republican offensive has ended." Ian Paisley, the fiercely outspoken leader of the province's largest Protestant political party, the Democratic Unionist Party, has agreed to serve as Northern Ireland's first minister, sharing power with second minister Martin McGuinness, deputy head of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political affiliate.