Clergymen "utterly certain" of IRA move

Methodist minister Harold Good and Redemptionist priest Alec Reid

The conference also heard statements from two clergymen who acted as witnesses to the latest IRA initiative. Redemptorist Priest Alec Reid and Methodist Minister Harold Good.

The clergymen said that they were "certain, utterly certain, about the exactitude of this report because we have spent many days watching the painstaking way General De Chastelain went about the task".

They went on to state that the "experience of seeing this with our own eyes on a minute-to-minute basis" clearly demonstrated to them that "beyond any shadow of doubt" the IRA had put its arms beyond use.

Benchmark for the resolution

Harold Good concluded his statement by saying that both he and Alec Reid hoped the development "will become a benchmark for the resolution for political conflicts everywhere" and that for people in the North of Ireland "it will herald the dawn of a new peace".