Brian Keenan, a commanding figure during the Irish Republican Army's long march from war to peace, died Wednesday of cancer in Dublin. He was 66.
Keenan built up the IRA's weapons arsenal in the 1970s, directed its bombing campaign in England and served on the IRA's ruling "army council" for a decade -- casting votes to break and call cease-fires in the 1990s.
To his death, however, Keenan sent mixed signals on the IRA's 2005 decisions to disarm and formally abandon a 1970-97 campaign that claimed 1,775 lives. He had been the IRA's most prominent critic of disarmament demands -- insisting the move should not happen until the British north was united with the Irish Republic.
Keenan resigned from the seven-man army council after the 2005 peace moves, when his cancer was already advanced.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
