The Future of the Peace Process

Abstract

The Mitchell Review concluded with a carefully choreographed programme of events in which the parties recommitted themselves to the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) issued a report detailing how they would now carry out their mandate and the Republicans, as well as Loyalists, undertook to appoint representatives to work with the IICD. In his statement of 18 November 1999 Senator George Mitchell affirmed that ‘a basis now exists for the institutions to be established’ and that, ‘Devolution should take effect, then the executive should meet, and then the paramilitary groups should appoint their authorised representatives, all on the same day, in that order.’