The second IRA act of decommissioning, which was welcomed by President Bush, is also giving further impetus to a groundswell against a Capitol Hill hearing scheduled for April 24th on links between the IRA and the Colombian FARC guerrillas.
Sources on the Hill say that calls made last week by Mr Ben Gillman, a former chairman of the Committee on International Relations, for the hearings to be put off are being supported privately by a number of Congressmen with Irish connections and will be helped by yesterday's decision.
In a statement issued in Knoxsville, Tennessee, the President said the announcement "reinforces that decommissioning is an ongoing process, not a single event" and he paid tribute to the work of the Independent Commission on Decommissioning.
"Decommissioning by all paramilitary groups is critical to the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement," the statement added. "We call on all paramilitary organisations to decommission their weapons and to abstain from obtaining additional weaponry. We also renew our call for movement on other issues central to the Northern Ireland peace process, including the participation of all parties on the new policing board and further demilitarisation."
Mr Bush said he was heartened by the development and looked forward to a future "where political disputes are resolved exclusively through peaceful means."
Congressman Richie Neal (Dem, Massachusetts) said the announcement "should make it perfectly clear that the IRA is fully committed to putting its arms beyond use. This is a significant development which will help strengthen the peace process . . . and will bring us one step closer towards the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement." Mr Neal's emphasis on the IRA's peaceful intentions is understood to partly reflect his concern that a hearing could be counterproductive at this time.
Congressional sources say there has been growing concern at the way the hearings were called by the committee's chairman, Mr Henry Hyde, "without proper consultation", and a belief that the IRA is being targeted as the inadvertent by-product of an attempt to shore up the case for new funding for the Colombian military.
Conservatives have been keen to see restrictions on US funding to Colombian anti-narcotics efforts lifted so it can be used to assist the army in its broader war against FARC and other guerrillas seen as threatening the country's fragile democracy.
By demonstrating the FARC's international contacts they hope to tie the campaign into President Bush's war against terrorism.
"The Colombian military reports that the Basques, Cubans, North Koreans, Iranians and IRA terrorists" are all involved in Colombia supporting FARC, Mr Hyde wrote recently.
