Irish Skeptical Of IRA Disarm Plan

Protestant Leader Says He'll Judge Group On Its Actions, Not Words

(CBS/AP)  For Robert Smith, a carpet salesman in one of Belfast's roughest Protestant neighborhoods, the latest peace pledge from the Irish Republican Army seemed little more than a slick sales pitch designed to appeal in an age of global terror.

"They have seen what has happened in London and New York and they can't be seen as terrorists any more ... but they're still terrorists," said Smith, 44, who lost two cousins and several friends to IRA attacks.

Sinn Fein party leader Gerry Adams, who reportedly quit the IRA's seven-man command in May after three decades, said Thursday that the IRA is effectively ending its self-declared war to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom.

"There is a time to resist, to stand up and to confront the enemy by arms if necessary," Adams said. "In other words, unfortunately, there is a time for war. There is also a time to engage, to reach out, to put the war behind us all. ... This is that time."

Ian Paisley, whose Democratic Unionist Party represents most Protestants, accused the IRA of repeatedly issuing hollow, deceptive statements and said he didn't plan to cooperate with Sinn Fein any time soon.

"We will judge the IRA's bona fides over the next months and years based on its behavior and activity," he said.

The IRA's renunciation of political violence and promise to disarm Thursday won easy praise from world leaders - but received a much tougher critique from Belfast's streetwise Catholics and Protestants, who offered views as divided as the city's high-walled neighborhoods.

Smith's own neighborhood boasts a 50-foot-tall mural that honors rifle-toting Protestant militants, who have yet to make the same concrete pledges as the IRA and have caused much more bloodshed this year.

In the IRA power base of Ardoyne, some Catholics said they fear the IRA pledge is a dangerous surrender that would encourage attacks from surrounding Protestant districts. Others predicted IRA members would defect to burgeoning dissident groups opposed to compromise.

"A lot of good men who died would be turning in their graves, just like my stomach is turning over listening to this," said Harry McClafferty, 51, as the IRA news was broadcast in an Ardoyne pub.

Thursday's declaration by Gerry Adams followed a two-year diplomatic showdown between the IRA and its allied Sinn Fein party, on the one hand, and an increasingly unified, impatient world community on the other.

The IRA has faced mounting international pressure to disarm and disband since December, when police blamed it for a world-record $50 million bank robbery.

Adding to the momentum for peace was the knifing death in January of Catholic civilian Robert McCartney, who was killed by IRA members outside a Belfast bar. The murder was a public relations disaster for the IRA as Adams found himself unwelcome at many St. Patrick's Day events in the U.S., including at the White House and in Boston, and McCartney's five sisters and fiancée were invited instead as guests of honor.

In its statement Thursday, the IRA said it had "formally ordered an end to the armed campaign," a fundamental advance on its existing 1997 cease-fire, which had been open-ended. The statement was read aloud by IRA veteran Seanna Walsh in a DVD recording distributed to broadcasters.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair praised what he called "a step of unparalleled magnitude," and leaders in Ireland and the United States also heralded the announcement as historic.