The UDA announced today that all active service units of its Ulster Freedom Fighters military wing will be stood down from midnight tonight.
In an Armistice Day statement from the UDA leadership, read out at memorials to their dead colleagues, they said all weaponry would be put beyond use and all military intelligence destroyed.
They said they were making the move because the military war was over and the struggle to maintain the Union was on a new and more complex battlefield.
"The Ulster Defence Association is committed to achieving a society where violence and weaponry are ghosts of the past," the statement said.
While weapons were being "put beyond use", they were not being formally decommissioned.
South Belfast Brigadier Jackie McDonald said: "Ninety per cent of people in the loyalist community don't want de-commissioning. They are the people's guns. The people don't want to give them up because they don't trust people yet."
The UDA statement outlined a series of four actions as part of the transition including greater involvement in electoral politics and the development of their communities.
The order for members to desist from criminality was unequivocal.
"We have had those who joined our ranks for political reasons; these men went on to give great sacrifice and brought honour to the organisation and gained the respect of their comrades.
"But there have been those who joined our ranks for crime and self-gain. These people must be rooted out and never be allowed to breathe in our ranks. These people have been involved in drug dealing, and this must be stamped out."
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern welcomed the statement, which he described as "significant". "The commitments to stand-down the UFF in its entirety and to put all weaponry beyond use are to be welcomed.
"The condemnation of crime and criminality is also important, including the recognition of the damage done to loyalist communities by those engaged in drug-dealing," Mr Ahern said.
He called on the organisation to deliver on its commitments, including through engagement with the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.
Some stg£1.2 million of funding for UDA-linked community projects was blocked by the Executive's Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie.
The SDLP MLA said the UDA had failed to responded to her 60-day deadline to begin decommissioning its weapons after a summer of loyalist violence, particularly in Co Antrim.