Mowlam: "We cannot force people to hand in weapons"

Unionists Cry Foul on International Weapons Commission

The commission was approved on Tuesday night in Belfast by the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, and the Irish Foreign Minister, Ray Burke.

After signing the agreement, Dr Mowlam said: "Everybody knows that we cannot force people to hand in weapons. But what we have here is a structure to facilitate that from day one of the talks."

The decommissioning body will be made up of not less than two members and is expected to be headed by Canadian General John de Chastelain, although the chairman has not yet been confirmed.

Trimble: the agreement lacks substance

David Trimble criticises the Commission on the Today programme

David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist party (UUP), claimed the agreement lacked substance. Mr Trimble said: "The agreement itself has very little content in it. All we have got is an agreement to establish a commission - a commission has not even been set up yet and nothing has been decided on who will be part of it and so on. All those things have to happen and they have to happen before we can have substantive talks."

Speaking on the Today programme, Mr Trimble said Unionists had been promised in July that decommissioning arrangements would be in place by the time multi-party talks began. And he declared: "The talks cannot take place until these issues are dealt with - that's quite clear under the existing procedures. These steps follow one after the other, they can't leapfrog."

Paisley: "This decommissioning body is a fraud and a deception"

Ian Paisley Jnr of the Democratic Unionists said the disarmament body had no power to demand the hand-over of weapons and would deliver nothing. "This decommissioning body is a fraud and a deception. The British and Irish agreement is an agreement not to decommission," he said.

Meanwhile, Dr Mowlam told the BBC that the IRA had shown some "genuineness" in their current ceasefire. "It is a positive picture as it was put to me by some folk in the security services," she said.

But the Northern Ireland Secretary was adamant that she had not yet decided whether Sinn Fein would be allowed to participate in the multi-party talks, scheduled to begin on 15 September.