The British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair has said the peace process cannot work unless the IRA permanently removes the threat of violence but he stopped short of calling for the organisation to disband.
In what was flagged as one of Mr Blair's most significant speeches on Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister said the threat of IRA violence was no longer an encouragement for unionists to engage in the peace process.
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British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair says the peace process cannot work unless the IRA permanently removes the threat of violence.
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He said that while some believe the threat of violence may have been strategically useful to the broad republican movement in the past, it was now an impediment to the implementation of the Belfast Agreement.
"The continuing existence of the IRA as an active paramilitary organisation is now the best card those whom republicans call rejectionist unionists have in their hand," Mr Blair said. "Republicans must make the commitment to exclusively peaceful means real, total and permanent," he added.
Sinn Fein leaders Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness had taken huge risks to bury the past and make the Agreement work, he claimed.
But with the IRA leadership resisting unionist demands to get rid of all their weapons and disband the organisation, the Prime Minister said the crunch had arrived for the republican movement.
He said: "We cannot carry on with the IRA half in, half out of this process. Not just because it isn't right any more. It won't work any more ... Remove the threat of violence and the peace process is on an unstoppable path."
Hardline Unionists were also told the British government would not bow to pressure for a re-negotiation of the Agreement. "The British will simply not countenance any path other than implementing the Agreement," he said.
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Mr Blair also gave a clear indication that another act of decommissioning would not be sufficient to restore the institutions. "Another inch by inch negotiation won't work. Symbolic gestures, important in their time, no longer build trust. It is time for acts of completion."
He said if the IRA remove the threat of violence he would fully implement the remainder of the Belfast Agreement and that he could incept all outstanding provisions simultaneously.
He said he did not believe Unionists had rejected the Agreement: "They don't believe it is being implement properly whilst paramilitary activity remains."
Mr Blair was addressing business leaders, trade unionists, community workers and senior Irish and British civil servants at the Belfast Harbour Commissioner's Office in what was a surprise visit to the North.
He was jeered by around a dozen Sinn Fein protesters when he arrived at the building many of them unfurling large banners asking "Who's Afraid Of Peace?".
A BBC Northern Ireland poll earlier today claimed support for the Belfast Agreement had plunged to an all-time low.
Even more worryingly for London and Dublin, 58% of unionists said they were now not prepared to share power with Sinn Fein or the moderate nationalist SDLP.
Additional reporting PA & AFP