Give up guns, loyalists told

LOYALIST paramilitaries in Northern Ireland must begin decommissioning their weapons, Secretary of State Shaun Woodward said yesterday.

Earlier this year, he controversially extended the legislation that allows for supervised decommissioning to give loyalists a further opportunity to have their guns taken off the streets.

But yesterday he repeated his warning that he would pull the plug on the special powers if they had not started the process by August.

In January, Mr Woodward got the backing of MPs to extend the work of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning in the hope that loyalists would follow the path taken by the IRA, which put its weapons beyond use in 2005.