Originally Posted by fast bloke

If you consider that they believe they are a legitimate army, then if they hand the weapons over to the army, that would be seen as a surrender (Anyone remember Paisley dancing down the garvaghy road, setting the parades issue back 10 years in the process) - Sinn Fein are not asking that the British Army hand over the weapons they take off the streets to the IRA, so why should the reverse be true.
The whole decomissioning think is a smokescreen anyway. As no-one really knows all the stuff they have, they could pile half of it up in front of city hall and give Paisley an angle grinder - no-one could be really sure if they had anything left. On the flip side, if the hand over everything, Paisley will say - that is only half - no deal until we get the rest. - Fairly similar to George Dubbya and Tony asking Saddam to hand over his WMD's or else.
If there was a method of destroying all the current arms to everyones complete satisfaction (which there probably isn't) then there would be nothing to stop them rearming in 6 months or 6 years anyway, so I completely fail to see the importance of decomissioning in the big picture

Originally Posted by Luan Pra bang

All those members with vast amounts of power are not going to walk away and go back to work. They are going to become gangsters drug dealers run protection rackets and generally cause problems for years