The Provisional IRA had committed "an overt act of treachery" and had surrendered by carrying out its guarantee to give over its arms dumps and have them sealed, the Republican Sinn Fein president, Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh, said yesterday.
No military force claiming to be an army could give its arsenal into the safe-keeping of another party, in this case one which reported back to that army's enemy, without going into liquidation, he said in a statement.
It was no longer an army. It had surrendered, not just politically on its objectives but it had also in effect disbanded without those objectives being realised.
"Worse still, its leaders by their actions have committed an overt act of treachery. This contravention of their own rules is rated by General Order No 11 as `treachery punishable by death'."
The example of the Irish struggle for national independence, so long an inspiration to people fighting for liberation against colonialism and imperialism the world over, would now, insofar as the Provos were concerned, be cited as a classic case of betrayal, counter-revolution and collaboration.
Mr O Bradaigh said, however, that there remained one section of the Irish people which continued to resist English rule in Ireland. That was the lesson of Irish history and would continue to be the case until the British government left Ireland, in spite of betrayals, treachery and collaboration with the enemy.