The IRA's decision to end its paramilitary campaign could be the most important step for the Northern peace there since the Belfast agreement, former US president Bill Clinton has said.
Mr Clinton, who was a key figure in the negotiation of the 1998 accord, said he believed there was "overwhelming grass-roots support within the IRA for doing this".
"I think they are quite determined to implement this statement ... They are very careful about what they say and so, I believe they intend to do this," he said. "They have left themselves no wiggle room."
In comments last night (Irish time) Mr Clinton said the announcement was "potentially the biggest thing to happen in the peace process since the Good Friday agreement".
The IRA Army Council yesterday formally ordered an end to the organisation's armed campaign, effective immediately. It ordered all units to dump their weapons, and all members "to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means".
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said the announcement was "a courageous and confident initiative and a momentous defining point".
The Irish and British governments also gave the announcement a warm welcome though unionists reacted with caution.
Britain has already ordered the dismantling of one of south Armagh's controversial British army watchtowers and said it would extend its "security normalisation programme".
Mr Clinton said if verified decommissioning happens it would be "the fulfilment of something I have worked for since 1994".
"The astonishing prosperity that peace has brought to Northern Ireland - which is interested in caught up with the Irish Republic - has made people in both communities people highly intolerant of violence coming from any quarter for any reason - for political or criminal reasons."
Mr Clinton's wife, New York senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, later hailed the announcement a "historic forsaking of violence" that represented a call to all parties to engage in the political process.
"Today, all of the people of Ireland have won a victory, for their future path is one of peace," she said.
"The Good Friday Agreement envisioned that a day would come when all paramilitary activity would cease. All paramilitary groups, be they nationalist or loyalist, must cease to operate so that peaceful debate about Northern Ireland's future in the world can begin."
The New York Democrat, rumoured to have the US presidency in her sights, said the potential for further progress in Northern Ireland remained strong. She pledged that the US would continue to do all it could to support the peace process.
Agencies