The IRA no longer poses a terrorist threat and has taken a strategic decision to follow a political path, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) has stated in its latest report published yesterday by the British and Irish governments..
The ninth report of the commission, which deals primarily with British army demilitarisation, said that the IRA leadership has given instructions to its members not to engage in public disorder. "It does not, in our view, present a terrorist threat and we do not believe it is a threat to members of the security forces," the four-member commission added.
In an implicit reference to allegations of continuing IRA criminality it said, in accordance with its last report published in February, that any "illegal activity which may be engaged in by the organisation or its members is mainly of a kind to be addressed by the police without need for military assistance".
The commission said the most serious paramilitary threat to British security forces came from dissident republicans who posed a greater danger in particular areas such as south Armagh and were also engaged in organised crime.
"They aspire to mount attacks on these forces, as they do on the general public, and they train members and acquire equipment to that end. Their capacity for sustained campaigns is limited but they are prepared to resort to extreme violence," it added.
While recent court cases and reports have indicated that the UDA is contemplating moving away from paramilitarism, the commission said that loyalist paramilitaries were heavily involved in "organised crime and other crime including drugs" and were "capable of extreme violence" as exemplified in the UVF/LVF feud last summer and at the Whiterock parade riots in September.
"Though we do not think they present a continuing terrorist threat to the security forces akin to that of the dissident republicans, they showed in those disorders that they were ready to mount attacks on the security forces, having planned and equipped themselves in advance to use extreme violence," it said.
"Though none of the loyalist groups have taken strategic decisions similar to that taken by the PIRA, we believe there are signs of a possible readiness to turn away from some of their present criminality. It is impossible to say at this stage how far, if at all, these signs will develop into any real changes of behaviour."
The IMC found that the British government and the British army are honouring their demilitarisation, or normalisation, commitments. For instance, it reported that from June 2004 to January this year, British troop levels dropped by over 4,600 from 13,876 to 9,209.
Moreover, the number of army observation posts operating along the Border and in other high security areas dropped by 50 per cent over the same period from 10 to five.
The number of joint PSNI/British army bases was reduced from 13 to five, with the PSNI now in sole control in eight more stations. The number of military bases dropped from 25 to 22 over the same period.
The commission said the British government and army was meeting its commitments and that it saw no grounds for suggesting that the programme of demilitarisation "should be either slowed down or accelerated".
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Northern Secretary Peter Hain welcomed the continuing commission assessment that the IRA no longer posed a terrorist threat.
Sinn Féin Assembly member Alex Maskey described the report on demilitarisation as "irrelevant".