Portrait of the Week – 6 August 2005

The Irish Republican Army sent out a digital video disc in which Mr Seanna Walsh, once imprisoned for his deeds, read out a statement saying, ‘The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign …Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.’ In a joint response Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Mr Bertie Ahern, the Taoiseach of Ireland, took this to mean ‘the end of the IRA as a paramilitary organisation’. Mr Blair called it ‘a step of unparalleled magnitude’. The IRA offered to let a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister see some arms being put beyond use, but disallowed photography. Before any such disarmament, the British government announced the halving of troop numbers in Northern Ireland in the next two years. Police in Birmingham arrested Yasin Hassan Omar, suspected of trying to set off a bomb on the London Underground near Warren Street on 21 July.