Tony Blair tonight piled pressure on Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists to accept that Sinn Fein are legitimate government partners by lauding a report on paramilitary activity which said that the Provisional IRA is definitively winding down.

The Independent Monitoring Commission said that the Provisionals have begun reducing its membership and shut down specialist units responsible for weapons-making, arms smuggling and training.

Mr Blair seized on the report’s findings as evidence that the IRA had permanently renounced violence and appealed to Ian Paisley and other politicians in the province to recognise the opportunity to reach a final settlement in talks next week.

But while the Rev Paisley said that it showed that his party’s hardline stance was delivering the IRA’s abandonment of its terrorist structures he gave no indication that he would soon reach an agreement to share power with Sinn Fein.

The 60-page report by a four-man panel which includes former directors of the US Central Intelligence Agency and the anti-terrorist unit of Scotland Yard said that the Provisionals had recently shut down three command units and "run down its terrorist capability".

"It has disbanded ’military’ structures, including the General Headquarters departments responsible for (weapons) procurement, engineering and training, and it has stood down volunteers (rank-and-file members) and stopped allowances (payments)," the report said.

"We do not believe that PIRA is now engaged in terrorism. We do not believe that PIRA is undertaking terrorist-type training. We do not believe that PIRA has been recruiting. ... The leadership is seeking to reduce the size of the organisation. We have no evidence of targeting, procurement or engineering activity.

"We believe that the leadership does not consider a return to terrorism as in any way a viable option and that it continues to direct its members not to engage in criminal activity," the commission said.

In a brief statement in Downing Street, Mr Blair declared: "The IRA has done what we asked it to do." The Prime Minister recognised some people would be sceptical about the report’s conclusions but said it had reached them independently.

"In short, Sinn Fein and the IRA are following the political path and the commitment to exclusively democratic means," Mr Blair said.

"The IRA campaign is over. There is now a consensus across all the main parties in the province of Northern Ireland that change can only come through persuasion and not through violence of any sort.

Mr Blair added: "While issues like policing remain to be resolved, the door is now open to a final settlement which is why the talks next week in Scotland are going to be so important.

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