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London doesn't expect

IRA disarmament

for 'a year or two'

LONDON: The British government believes the paramilitary Irish Republican Army (IRA) will not disarm for at least a year, far later than the May deadline in the Northern Ireland peace accord, The Independent reported on Saturday.

According to the paper, normally well informed on Northern Ireland matters, London believes that the armed republican group will eventually accept the principle of decommissioning its arsenal but that the process will take longer than hoped.

Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday accord Ñ signed by leaders of the province's republican Catholic and loyalist Protestant communities Ñ the paramilitary groups on both sides should disarm by May.

That goal appears to be increasingly unlikely, with the IRA and other groups yet to hand in any weapons to a special decommissioning body.

A report by the international body set up to oversee disarmament concluded Monday that no paramilitaries on any side had given up a single gun.

According to the Independent, the IRA is unlikely to do so in the near future.

A senior government source told the paper: "It is the end of an era for the republican movement, but it will take more time to move into the next one. The dividend will not show immediately. We believe it will show in a year or two year's time".

The British government on Friday officially put the province's power-sharing executive "on hold" for seven days.

The decommissioning row threatens to scupper the province's two-month old power-sharing executive.

Britain has started pushing through legislation to give it the power to reimpose direct rule from London if necessary.ÑAFP