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I never talk about shooting anybody, but I do acknowledge I was a member of the IRA, and as a member of the IRA, I obviously engaged in fighting back against the British army.

The destruction of civilian hamlets, the killing and the wounding of civilians, became vastly greater than it had been before, and it was very upsetting; but I still couldn't bring myself to understand that the policy itself was wrong.

But that citizen's perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutality of the means by which the IRA were pursuing change was destructive of the trust upon which new possibilities would have to be based.

What's crucial is that the IRA produce a credible statement that paramilitary and criminality activity is a thing of the past. That they are committed to a future which is exclusively peaceful and democratic.

You could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in the north who said to me, 'When did you leave the IRA?'

It is a rule of international law that weapons and methods of warfare which do not discriminate between combatants and civilians should never be used.

Indiscriminate attacks on civilians ought, under all circumstances, to be illegal in war as in peacetime.

You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.

We're so used to using military terminology in civilian speech that we forget those terms might mean something very specific.