The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has commended the IRA statement to republicans, urging them to consider it carefully.
Speaking at a ceremony on the Falls Road, Belfast, commemorating the republican hunger strikes, Mr Adams said the onus was now on the British government to move as agreed and not "do a side deal" or renege on commitments.
"I think the way that republicans should come to this week's developments is thoughtfully. I think you should get the army statement. I think you should ignore the spin and ignore all the different pressures from the media and so on. I think you should open up a debate on all these matters. I think you should come to them wisely and intelligently and look at them all in a strategic fashion," he told the thousands gathered at Dunville Park.
"The IRA, the army leadership, has taken an initiative. In my view it is a commendable initiative. Now some of you may think it goes too far; some of you may be fearful about where all this is going to lead, especially people who live in vulnerable places.
"The army statement gets to the core of what's been going on here for the last two years," he continued. It was all about bringing about change. "And we republicans want the most change. We want total transformation of the situation."
The IRA statement was also about giving assurance to those who were "genuinely nervous about change", he said. "What we have to get our heads around, what the British government has to get its head around and what unionism has to get its head around, is that an IRA which was not defeated in 30 years of war is not going to let itself be defeated in the course of a peace process."
Acknowledging the anger and confusion of some republicans over recent events, Mr Adams said that until those in the British establishment and unionism realised that this was a good offer and a sensible way forward, he would be afraid "of the possibility of all this being frittered away".
"Many people . . .who voted for the Good Friday agreement - even reluctantly, because it was a compromise for Sinn Fein - were angry when the British government moved in and suspended the institutions. But one of the things that strikes me - given what we've been through, given the experiences we've had within the prisons and on the streets over this last 30 years - that we are not going to be distracted or diverted by the platitudes or the patronising tones or the endless demands of unionism."
Speaking on the BBC's On the Record, the former Stormont education minister, Mr Martin McGuinness, described the IRA statement as "a powerful development".