The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) will tomorrow publish its most positive statement about IRA activity, stating that the organisation has ended its paramilitary campaign and is instructing all members to disavow criminality, The Irish Times has learned.
The IMC will state that the IRA is honouring its commitment of last year to end its armed campaign and that it is actively working to prevent IRA members engaging in criminality, well-placed sources said yesterday.
The British and Irish governments believe this is the most "significant" IMC report to date and that it will set a constructive tone for the talks with the Northern parties in St Andrews in Scotland next week. Aimed at restoring devolution, the talks will be chaired by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair.
This, the 12th report of the IMC, will say that "IRA paramilitarism is over and criminality is being stopped" while acknowledging that some individual members of the IRA are involved in criminal acts contrary to the orders of the IRA leadership, the sources added.
"Where criminality is happening it is happening on a freelance basis. Instructions are coming down from the leadership to IRA members that criminality must stop and those instructions are having an impact, and that will be clear in the IMC report," explained one senior insider.
"We are certainly at the point where we think that when the IRA says its armed campaign is over and it has renounced criminality it means what it says," the source added. "The IRA is following the path it set for itself last year. The leadership doesn't see a return to violence as a viable option."
The IMC report will also say that IRA members were involved in two assaults in August but that these were carried out without the sanction of the leadership.
This report comes six months after British agent and Sinn Féin's former head of administration at Stormont Denis Donaldson was found murdered in a cottage outside Glenties in Co Donegal.
The IMC will not ascribe any blame for this killing to the IRA - either to the leadership or members acting without leadership authority - while saying it does not know who was responsible for the murder.
Some reports have suggested that IRA members were involved in a bitter family feud in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast that has cost over £1 million to police. The IMC will make general reference to the feud, which stemmed from the murder of Gerard Devlin last February, but again attribute no blame to the IRA.
The IMC report also adverts to some efforts within loyalism to move away from paramilitarism and criminality but notes that, as one source said, the situation within loyalist paramilitarism is "chaotic" and uncertain. "Moving loyalism is proving much harder to achieve. There have been encouraging statements from some loyalist leaders but they are having very little impact," the source added.
The British and Irish governments believe that this report meets the key demand of the DUP before it would agree to share power with Sinn Féin: that the IRA end paramilitary activity and criminality.
Mr Blair's chief spokesman said the IMC report would be "very significant". He said yesterday: "We hope it will provide the definitive answer to the question as to whether the IRA campaign in all its forms is finally over and whether Sinn Féin is living up to the commitments it has made to pursue its ends by solely political means."