It contained provisions for a government involving both Catholics and Protestants, whose traditional aspirations, expressed as nationalism on one side and unionism on the other, had often clashed over the years.
Into late 2001, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was reluctant to disarm, and went on to refuse disarmament, saying that the British government had reneged on its side of the bargain,: specifically: After the original (May 2000) deadline for decommissioning passed, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning set 30 June 2001; that date passed, as well, without full disarmament.
[3][5] The crisis reached its climax in July 2001, as David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, resigned as first minister of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive, in protest against the IRA's failure to redeem its pledge to put its weapons "completely and verifiably beyond use".
)[4] The peace process was on the brink of collapse again, after the Provisional IRA failed to convince either the UK Government, or the Ulster Unionists, that they had made "sufficient progress towards decommissioning".
General John de Chastelain of Canada, chairman of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, said the proposals had been accepted by the panel as ones that would "put IRA arms completely and verifiably beyond use."