An act of decommissioning by the IRA is anticipated in the coming days, but it is thought unlikely it will take the form of a public destruction of weapons.
Instead, it is believed the IRA will "permanently" seal arms dumps with the effective destruction of the weapons in them and that this will then be verified by Gen John de Chastelain's Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD).
There is anticipation, also, that if decommissioning does take place, the British army may move quickly to de-escalate its presence along the south Armagh border.
Senior British military sources have indicated that there could be rapid movement on the removal of the hilltop observation posts in south Armagh, which are a major source of aggravation to local nationalists.
At the Weston Park talks in England earlier this year, the British government gave a commitment to closing three of the 11 bases. However, senior British sources have indicated more recently that, in the event of IRA decommissioning, all the posts could go.
The whereabouts of the IRA's arms dumps remains a secret, but it is believed that they are in the Republic.
It is thought that they contain a large amount of infantry weapons, ranging from handguns to medium machineguns, rockets, mortars and explosive.
Two dumps were inspected on three occasions by the former Finnish President, Mr Martti Ahtisaari, and the leading ANC figure, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, between the autumn of last year and the spring of this year.
The decision to allow independent inspectors to oversee the destruction of its weapons is unprecedented in the history of "physical force" Irish republicanism.
After the last occasion when the IRA called off a campaign - following the 1956 to 1962 campaign - it issued orders to "dump" weapons, but not to surrender them or allow the oversight of their destruction.
Republican sources reported recently that there have been arguments among remaining IRA members about the act of decommissioning. To assuage these elements, the leadership has backed away from a public show of destroying weapons.
Elements of the IRA leadership close to Sinn FΘin, were reported to have wanted to publicise the act of decommissioning in order to make up for the recent political and media reverses which the organisation has suffered in the US in the wake of the arrests of three republicans in Colombia and the September 11th attacks in New York and Washington.
After meeting Sinn FΘin's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, in New York yesterday, prominent Irish-American supporters of Sinn FΘin said they expected a statement on arms from the IRA as early as today.