Panel: IRA No Longer A Threat

The Irish Republican Army has stopped recruiting members and has shut down units responsible for bomb-making and weapons smuggling, an expert panel reported Wednesday in findings designed to spur a revival of Catholic-Protestant cooperation in Northern Ireland.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the report "does lay the basis for the final settlement of the conflict in Northern Ireland."

The Irish government also warmly welcomed the findings of the Independent Monitoring Commission, a four-man panel that includes former directors of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the anti-terrorist unit of Scotland Yard.

The commission reported that the IRA — which last year declared a formal end to its campaign to overthrow Northern Ireland by force — had followed through on that historic pledge by shutting down key units that, from 1970 to 1997, oversaw attacks that claimed 1,775 lives and maimed tens of thousands more.

"It has disbanded `military' structures," the commission said, "And it has stood down volunteers (rank-and-file members)."

In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said the findings of the Independent Monitoring Commission "are of the utmost importance and significance."

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain called on leaders of the province's British Protestant majority "to recognize that the paramilitary situation, in particular the situation of the IRA, has changed absolutely fundamentally and radically."

"Is there now a security threat from the IRA? The answer's no," Hain said, adding: "I do not believe anybody thinks that the IRA can come back as a war machine. That is over for them, they have chosen a different, democratic path."

The commission also published findings that the IRA no longer gathers intelligence on the movements of police and British soldiers, and is no longer trying to smuggle weapons.

Britain and Ireland timed the publication of the report in hopes of boosting progress in a negotiating summit Oct. 11-13 involving Protestant leaders and Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that represents most of Northern Ireland's Catholic minority.

Both governments have given the rival factions a Nov. 24 deadline to revive a power-sharing administration, the central goal of the 1998 peace accord for Northern Ireland.

A previous administration collapsed in 2002 amid chronic tensions between Protestants and Sinn Fein.

The major Protestant-backed party, the Democratic Unionists, says it will not cooperate with Sinn Fein until that party drops its policy of refusing to cooperate with Northern Ireland's police force.