Nobody could call Reverend Ian Paisley a yes man. For more than 50 years the word 'no' has been the cornerstone of the 79-year-old firebrand preacher-turned-politician's defence of British rule and Protestant values in Northern Ireland.
As leader and founder of the Democratic Unionist Party, the reverend said no to the granting of civil rights to Northern Ireland's nationalist community in the 1960s; no to closer ties with the Republic of Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s; no to the ground-breaking 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of sectarian violence; no to negotiations with Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing; and no even to line dancing, the seemingly harmless 1990s fad that he decried as being sinful - 'with its sexual gestures and touching, [it] is an incitement to lust'.
It therefore came as no surprise that when leaders in London, Dublin and Washington this week said yes, they were satisfied the IRA's last gun had finally been decommissioned and the way was open for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland, Mr Paisley said no.
To most observers, it seemed the hardline unionists finally had what they wanted: the gun had been taken out of politics and the last obstacle to restoring a devolved government in Belfast made up of the DUP and Sinn Fein had been removed.
But the decommissioning process, begun seven years ago under the respected Canadian former general John de Chastelain, was the 'falsehood of the century', Mr Paisley said, adding that he had no intention of forming a government with Sinn Fein.
Two clergymen - one Protestant, the other Catholic - who, with Mr de Chastelain, witnessed the final act that marked the end of 36 years of violence were 'clearly under the control of the general' and were 'appointees of the IRA'. There were IRA splinter groups, he said, that were 'prepared to carry on the butchery and violence'.
'Instead of openness there was the cunning tactics of a cover-up, the complete failure of General de Chastelain to deal with the vital numbers of decommissioning,' Mr Paisley said after Monday's announcement. 'We do not know how many guns, the amounts of ammunition [and] explosives, nor were we told how the decommissioning was carried out.'
