All the evidence points to the Provisional IRA moving to a position where it is dealing exclusively with politics, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern insisted today.
Just hours after the British and Irish governments confirmed they had received the latest report on paramilitary activity by the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC), Mr Ahern challenged Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson's assertion that the Provisionals must demonstrably have dismantled their command structure.
After meetings with the Northern Ireland Assembly parties at Stormont, Mr Ahern said: "I do not think people should be putting in conditions at this stage because we all know what the net issues are.
"Even if we come to them on November 24th, 2006, or 2007 they will still be the same issues.
"I think I will leave it up to the IMC to state what the position is in relation to the Provisional IRA but it is quite clear from anybody's reading, if you see any graph produced by the IMC as to the level of activity and how that has fallen to virtually nothing over the last number of months, that [it] has been fairly constant.
"I think you see fairly clearly that the Provisional movement has done exactly what they undertook to do and they have for all intents and purposes moved to a position where they are now exclusively dealing with politics and not as they were doing previously," Mr Ahern said.
The four-member Independent Monitoring Commission's report is expected to be published by the British and Irish governments on Wednesday.