DUBLIN, July 28: The Irish Republican Army announced an end to its armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland on Thursday, in a move which Prime Minister Tony Blair said could mark the day “politics replaces terror” there. But the province’s main pro-British Protestant party said the statement failed to forswear acts of crime or to inspire confidence that guns had been set aside for ever.

The IRA said in a statement that it would cease all armed activity and pursue its aims through politics — a crucial move to kick-start talks on a lasting political settlement in the province. It said its units must “dump arms”. The group made no explicit reference to ending criminal activity, nor did it promise to disband.

The statement read in part: “The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann (IRA) has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign. “This will take effect from 4pm this afternoon. All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means.”

The IRA said it would engage with an independent arms decommissioning body to verify it had put its massive arsenal of guns and explosives beyond use, but gave no date for completion. Northern Ireland Minister Peter Hain said the British and Irish governments had asked the province’s ceasefire watchdog to produce a report in January so that progress could be assessed.

“I would be very clear that policing has got to be addressed,” he told Reuters. Mistrust of the largely Protestant police force in Catholic neighbourhoods was long cited as justification for the rough justice the IRA metes out in its working class heartlands.

Mr Blair told reporters in London: “This may be the day which finally after all these false dawns and dashed hopes peace replaces war, politics replaces terror on the island of Ireland.”

Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley said: “Even on the face of the statement, they have failed to explicitly declare an end to their multi-million-pound criminal activity and have failed to provide the level of transparency that would be necessary to truly build confidence that the guns had gone in their entirety.”

Mitchell Reiss, President George W. Bush’s special envoy for Northern Ireland, told CNN: “The statement is very encouraging, it’s potentially historic, and we need to wait and see over the next weeks and months if these words can be translated into deeds to determine if it is truly historic.”

Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy said on the Senate floor that he hoped the statement meant the long process was nearing an end to take “guns and criminality out of politics in Northern Ireland once and for all.”—Reuters