The Irish Republican Army (IRA) on Thursday ordered all its militants to end their armed campaign and adopt exclusively peaceful means to end British rule in Northern Ireland, the paramilitary group said in a historic statement.
The announcement is an unprecedented step by the Roman Catholic group, which has fought for 30 years to unite Northern Ireland, which is mostly Protestant, with the Irish Republic.
“The leadership of the IRA has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign,” starting at 3pm GMT on Thursday, the statement said.
“All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All volunteers [militants] have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means,” it said.
“Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever,” the statement said.
It added that “all volunteers are compelled to fully comply with these orders”.
But the statement said the organisation will not disband as leading Protestants demand.
It comes after the movement suffered major blows to its credibility in recent months, over its alleged involvement in a massive bank heist in Belfast and the murder of an Irish Catholic man earlier this year.
The announcement also comes amid worldwide revulsion at the wave of terrorist bombings by Islamic extremists, especially in the United States where the IRA has enjoyed significant support over the years.
In April, Gerry Adams, the leader of the political wing of the IRA, Sinn Fein, made a direct appeal to the Roman Catholic paramilitary group to embrace purely political and democratic activity.
The IRA has held secret consultations with its membership over the future of the movement for many months.
Martin McGuinness, the chief negotiator for Sinn Fein, travelled to Washington on Wednesday to brief “friends of the peace process” in the US Congress and in New York about recent moves for a lasting settlement.
On Tuesday, Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell said Adams, McGuinness and convicted gun-runner Martin Ferris — now a member of the Irish Parliament — had left the ruling “military council” of the IRA.
The Sinn Fein trio have previously denied that they are on the ruling body of the underground military organisation, which is responsible for dozens of bombings around Britain over the decades.
It declared a ceasefire before the 1998 Good Friday peace deal that largely ended the violence and paved the way for a Protestant-Catholic power-sharing assembly in Belfast.
But that deal was suspended more than two years ago amid allegations of IRA espionage, and hopes of a new political settlement were dashed in December when Sinn Fein refused to allow photographic documentation of IRA disarmament.
Even if the IRA lays downs its arms for good, Northern Ireland could still be bogged down by bickering between Catholics and Protestants.
Protestant factions in Northern Ireland, particularly the Democratic Unionist Party led by veteran hard-liner Ian Paisley, are adamant that there can be no lasting settlement unless the IRA ends all paramilitary and criminal activity.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed Thursday’s IRA statement as a “step of unparalleled magnitude” in the recent history of Northern Ireland.
During a brief statement in London, Blair said “this may be the day when finally after all the false dawns and dashed hopes, peace replaces war, politics replaces terror on the island of Ireland”.
He welcomed the “clarity” of the statement to end the armed campaign and “the recognition” that the only route to political change lies in exclusively peaceful and democratic means.
“This is a step of unparalleled magnitude in the recent history of Northern Ireland,” Blair said. — AFP