Britain tore down fortified watchtowers and Unionists moved to shore up Northern Ireland's collapsing provincial government Wednesday after the IRA's historic decision to disarm. 
Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid said work was starting on demolishing four key security installations in the province in the wake of Tuesday's move by the Irish Republican Army to destroy part of western Europe's biggest underground arsenal. 
Reid told parliament in London that work to demolish two watchtowers in the guerrilla heartland of south Armagh, close to the border with the Irish Republic, was "starting today." 
He added that work would start Thursday on the demolition of a British army base at in Magherafelt, in County Derry, and of security installations at Newton Hamilton. 
The installations -- plus the presence of 13,500 British service personnel -- are irksome reminders to republicans of British rule in the province, where 3,600 people have died in 30 years of feuding between pro-London Protestants and Roman Catholics seeking a united island of Ireland ruled from Dublin. 
Northern Ireland Protestant leader David Trimble renominated ministers from his Ulster Unionist Party to the power-sharing Protestant-Catholic government in Belfast. It had faced a Thursday deadline for dissolution by London after the UUP pulled out last week in protest at the IRA's failure to disarm. 
Trimble said the final decision to return to the government would be taken by party members at a meeting Saturday. Some hard-liners in his UUP party are doubtful about going back into government. But Trimble said it was time to show good faith. 
"In the interests of good government and entirely without prejudice to the decision that will be taken by my party on Saturday I have earlier this afternoon nominated again the Ulster Unionist ... ministers," he told the London parliament. 
Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, which hopes to blossom into a powerful "all-Ireland" powerbroker on the back of the progress on disarmament, said the watershed decision by the IRA had "liberated the process" of building peace in Northern Ireland. 
"The issue of guns is now where it should always have been -- within that part of the agreement which is set up to deal with that," Adams said, referring to the landmark 1998 Good Friday which set up the power-sharing government and also set parameters for disarmament and other key issues, like policing. 
"Politics is now going to have to rise to the challenge," he said after meeting in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern. 
But there were warnings from die-hard pro-British "loyalists" and from republicans alike that not everyone agreed with newspaper headlines trumpeting "The War is Over" -- that the IRA's decision to disarm had put an end to the conflict. 
British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged as much when he told parliament: "Of course there is a risk from splinter republican groups ... and loyalist groups. 
"It is important obviously we take account of that. But I also think it's important we don't let any of those groups have any form of veto over the process of moving forward. 
"We do believe that yesterday's situation does change the situation significantly," Blair added. 
Tuesday, he said, was "the day when people understood finally that the gun and bomb have no place whatsoever in the future of Northern Ireland." 
Moderate unionists welcomed the historic IRA gesture, chief among them Trimble, who resigned as first minister of the province's executive earlier this year in protest at the lack of disarmament. 
His ministers recently followed, threatening the entire Northern Ireland power-sharing peace process, set in motion with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, with collapse. 
But some hard-line Protestant Unionists were far from satisfied, particularly because the weapons were destroyed in secret, overseen by a body whose inspectors are foreigners and is run by a Canadian, Gen. John de Chastelain. 
"I'd like to see the 'milestone'," the Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of the anti-Agreement Democratic Unionist Party, told Britain's Sky television. 
"Even the British prime minister doesn't know how many arms have been put away ... and he's not going to know. De Chastelain told me that the prime minister wouldn't know, nor would any of the list be given to him. 
"No British citizen was there, no member of the United Kingdom of which I am a member to tell me whether this happened or not. If they did such a thing why all the secrecy? If this is a milestone should we not be letting everybody see it?" 
Some renegade republican guerrillas also made clear they were not planning to lay down their arms. 
"There are other sections of the Republican Army still opposing Britain's presence on the island," Joe Dillon of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, which speaks for the Real IRA, an IRA splinter group, told BBC radio. 
"They will no doubt pick up the mantle of being the IRA now and continue the challenge to Britain's occupation." 
The Real IRA, whose members split from the mainstream IRA over the Good Friday Agreement, has carried out a series of attacks in recent years, including firing a rocket-propelled grenade at the London headquarters of the MI6 intelligence service. (Additional reporting by Michael Roddy)