THE Iraqi government has plans to establish decommissioning and ceasefire monitoring bodies modelled on the ones used during the Northern Ireland peace process.

The details have been revealed by Hadi al-Amiri, chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s defence and security committee, who visited Northern Ireland last month as part of a delegation of Sunni and Shi’ite leaders. The Foreign Office invited the Iraqis to Belfast to learn lessons from the peace process.

Al-Amiri said: “The Iraqi government is considering setting up a decommissioning body and wants further information on how it was established, designed and run in Northern Ireland.”

The Iraqis have asked for the Patten policing reforms, which transformed the RUC into the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), to be translated into Arabic so they can study them. They were particularly struck by how Catholic representation in the Northern Ireland police was increased by making older members redundant and recruiting on a 50/50 Catholic/Protestant basis.

Al-Amiri admits this approach may not be possible in Iraq and that it might be necessary to recruit a new force trained “according to the standards and procedures applied in countries with human rights priorities”. A former head of the Sadr militia, which fought British forces in the south of the country, Al-Amiri said: “Sunni and Shi’a alike have lost faith in the police force.”

Last week Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the former chief constable of the RUC, met Al-Amiri, along with Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, Rafaa al-Esawi, the minister of state for foreign affairs, and Mohammed al-Saadi, the prime minister’s adviser on national reconciliation initiatives.

These four and their officials are attempting to steer through a reform package based on the Northern Ireland model. A symposium attended by key Iraqi security figures and led by senior PSNI officers is planned for Jordan next year.

Andrew Sens, an American nominee on the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, who met the Iraqi delegation, said: “They were particularly interested in our view of the lessons learned from our experience here in dealing with paramilitary groups. They wondered how to deal with extremists at the fringes who attempt to hijack the process with an atrocity like the Omagh bomb.”

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