IRA to signal war is over as deal saves peace process

The IRA is expected to signal an important initiative today aimed at breaking the impasse over the peace process in Northern Ireland, including a third act of weapons decommissioning. The IRA is also thought to be poised to indicate that its war is over.

This will pave the way for elections to the Belfast Assembly in late November, and is part of a series of initiatives aimed at restoring devolved government to the province, suspended last October amid allegations of an IRA spy ring operating at the Assembly in Stormont. The IRA initiative forms part of a deal covering the issues that include policing and demilitarisation as well as the unprecedented republican language on the ending of paramilitarism.

In the first of today's choreographed announcements , the Government confirmed that elections for a new Assembly would be held on 26 November.

Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, are to travel to Hillsborough Castle near Belfast to announce the deal after an agreement hammered out between David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, and Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president.

A rush of activity is then expected. General John de Chastelain, the head of the decommissioning body, is standing by, apparently to witness a substantial amount of arms being put beyond use. Last night there were reports that the general was being taken to IRA arms dumps in the Irish Republic to witness acts of decommissioning. He is expected to report that a large arsenal has been rendered unusable.

A republican statement, to be issued as part of the carefully choreographed package, will indicate that all IRA activity is to cease. A complicated and intensive series of Unionist-republican negotiations have centred on an act of IRA decommissioning that is expected to go much further, both in terms of scale and visibility, than the group's two previous arms moves.

Mr Adams and the IRA will also use new language designed to meet Unionist demands for an announcement that "the war is over" and Mr Blair's demand for "acts of completion" from republicans.

Republicans will in return receive assurances that the Belfast Assembly will be given additional powers covering the highly sensitive fields of policing and justice, raising the prospect of a Sinn Fein minister taking over one of these departments. Sinn Fein is expected to signal a reversal of its attitude towards the supervising Policing Board, which it has so far refused to join.

Republicans have also negotiated assurances that the Assembly will not be subject to "stop-go" politics, in which the institution has been repeatedly suspended.

The Government will announce further movement on demilitarisation, probably including the evacuation of more Army installations, especially in border areas. Moves will also be made to allow the return to Northern Ireland of "on-the-runs", a number of republicans who have been liable to arrest and possible charges.

Although some of these new arrangements could take up to two years to complete, some parts of the deal will be set in train immediately.

Mr Trimble will be hoping that the concessions he has won will impress voters and halt the steady loss of support for the Good Friday Agreement among Protestants.

Mr Adams will hope that the IRA moves will impress nationalist voters and help Sinn Fein win more Assembly seats than its rivals in the Social Democratic and Labour Party.

One certainty is that Mr Trimble will have to overcome critics within his own party, led by Jeffrey Donaldson, who appeared on television yesterday alongside Peter Robinson of the rival Democratic Unionist Party. Mr Donaldson said: "It seems that our requirements on decommissioning and the disbandment of the IRA are once again being watered down. I think we are looking at another fudge and in such circumstances I believe a deal of that nature will be rejected by the overwhelming majority of Unionist voters."

Conor Murphy, from Sinn Fein, said the negotiations had reached "make-your-mind-up time".

Mr Ahern summed up the central question: "It is that we have stability with institutions on one side and on the other side that we are at the end of the game of paramilitarism."