Analysis: The IRA statement goes much further than the one issued last December writes Mark Hennessy.
In 1994, cars travelled down west Belfast and many other nationalist areas in Northern Ireland, horns blaring, wrapped in Tricolours, in the hours after the IRA declared its ceasefire.
There was less of a sense yesterday that the hand of history was spread upon the land. Too many false dawns have made politicians and the public cautious. Caution, perhaps, may prove to be a better servant.
If backed up by deeds over coming weeks and months, the IRA's statement is historic, one that will greatly challenge the organisation and those in it who may have bridled at the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
Undoubtedly, it is as clear and unambiguous as could have been expected in any document signed "P O'Neill" - certainly far more so than the effort it produced last December.
Then, the IRA had been urged by the Irish and British governments to sign up to a declaration that it would recognise "the need to uphold and not to endanger anyone's personal rights and safety, all IRA volunteers have been given specific instructions not to engage in any activity which might thereby endanger the new agreement".
The language proposed was turned down by the IRA, even though Taoiseach Bertie Ahern had believed for some time at least during late November that it would sign up.
On December 9th, the day after Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair had declared that negotiations effort a failure, the IRA produced its own text, one that was quickly deemed a failure by both governments.
Then, it said that it would "support a comprehensive agreement by moving into a new mode which reflects our determination to see the transition to a totally peaceful society".
It said it had been prepared to give specific instructions to all IRA volunteers not to engage in any activity which might thereby endanger that new agreement.
Furthermore, it said that the IRA leadership had also "decided that we will, in this context, conclude the process to completely and verifiably put all our arms beyond use".
Though those words were insufficient in the eyes of Dublin and London, their very truthfulness was called into question by the subsequent Northern Ireland Bank robbery. The biggest cash raid in the history of Britain or Northern Ireland, it has been blamed on the IRA and had to have been in preparation at the time of its statement.
Following the December debacle, both governments made clear that the IRA was in "the last-chance saloon".
The IRA yesterday went further than last December by ordering its members to dump arms, act through "exclusively peaceful means" and not "engage in any other activities whatsoever".
The language used offers little room for manoeuvre. Punishment beatings are out, intimidation is out, protection rackets are out, smuggling is out and robberies are out.
The danger of fracture is conceded in the IRA statement itself, which made it clear that "every volunteer is aware of the import of the decisions we have taken" and all "Óglaigh are compelled to fully comply with these orders".
Sinn Féin's credibility, damaged badly by intransigence in the eyes of the two governments and in the United States by the killing of Robert McCartney, will be set at nought if such acts occur.
Clearly, those who have lived well off criminality, as can be judged by some of the houses occupied by known republicans in some republican heartlands, are unlikely to be weaned away from such steady streams of income. Some, no doubt, will continue.
Such an outcome was tacitly accepted by Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern last night, though he implied that they would be dealt with as simple criminals, rather than ones wearing a republican cloak, if they did.
The IRA's declaration was published following, as it said, an unprecedented internal discussion and consultation process with IRA units and volunteers since Gerry Adams's address to the organisation on April 6th.
However, it has been published without a meeting of the IRA's army convention, the body usually given the final decisions upon major changes in tactics and strategies.
Though the murky world of republicanism is difficult to penetrate, it has to be believed that Mr Adams did not put the issue to the test before the convention because of the divisions that such a move would have brought to the surface.
At the end of last year, the IRA had been prepared to destroy its arsenal, under the eyes of the International Independent Commission on Decommissioning (IICD), "speedily and if possible by the end of December".
No such time limit was set yesterday. Instead, the statement said: "The IRA leadership has also authorised our representative to engage with the IICD to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible."
The lack of a completion date as such may mean little if it is backed up by a series of decommissioning acts during August, verified by the IICD head, Gen John De Chastelain.
From the point of view of the IRA, the delay created in December may prove beneficial if it is able to avoid having arms destruction photographed by the IICD and published subsequently. The photographs issue had assumed a totem-like importance for republicans, convinced as they are that the images would have been turned back upon them as an act of surrender by the DUP.
The two clergymen, one Protestant, one Catholic, will offer some extra comfort for unionists.