The Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, has said that the present political circumstances represent a basis for the way forward. However, if politicians failed to grasp the opportunity for peace, those conditions might not be reproduced.
As pressure mounts on unionists to accept the IRA's statement that it is prepared to initiate a process which will "completely and verifiably" put its weapons beyond use, Mr Mandelson said that a move on decommissioning could only have been achieved by politicians in Northern Ireland creating a "balance of confidence" on both sides.
That had now happened, he said. "If we don't seize it, if we let it slip from our grasp, I don't think that we will very easily again reproduce those conditions for peace in Northern Ireland", he told BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme yesterday.
The Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, welcomed the IRA's statement, but said there would have to be "real evidence" that weapons were being put beyond use.
Mr Martin McGuinness, of Sinn Fein, said that the IRA statement represented a "mighty step forward". He said that the statement had "cracked the nut" of the impasse over implementing the Belfast Agreement.
The European Union yesterday welcomed the IRA arms inspection offer as a breakthrough and urged all parties to accept it.
The EU's external relations commissioner, Mr Chris Patten, who drew up the controversial proposals on the future of the RUC, told a news conference after a meeting of EU foreign ministers in the Azores that there seemed to have been an "extraordinary and extremely hopeful breakthrough".
"I'm sure that we are all hoping that this is the move which is required in order to knock into place a permanent peace and a better and more stable life for the people of Northern Ireland," Mr Patten said.