The Provisional IRA, in the text of an interview issued early today, again said it would not be decommissioning its arsenal, the condition sought by unionists before republicans can be allowed to take up ministerial positions in the new Stormont Executive.
The spokesperson side-stepped demands for the IRA to declare that its war is over. By maintaining its cessation "with great discipline" the IRA had effectively created the existing opportunity for a lasting peace, and the challenge for everyone was to remove the causes of conflict.
"Far better that people would expend their energy on that than wasting time on word games around whether or not someone is prepared to say the war is over."
The statement in an interview with the Provisional IRA leadership, to be published in this week's edition of An Phoblacht Republican News, came in an answer to a question about unionist demands for decommissioning.
The Provisionals' spokesperson said: "We made our position absolutely clear on this in April, we stand by that statement. As I have just said, some people are using the decommissioning issue in support of their own narrow agendas of subverting or securing a renegotiation of the Good Friday document. This should not be allowed to happen."
In the previous IRA statement in April, again published in An Phoblacht, the spokesman said: "Let us make it clear that there will be no decommissioning by the IRA."
The IRA still viewed the Good Friday agreement as "a significant development", the spokesperson in the latest interview said. "We are, however, conscious of growing concern at the slow pace of movement."
The IRA has demanded the disbandment of the republican dissidents responsible for the Omagh bombing saying the `Real IRA' responsible for the atrocity had "undoubtedly" damaged the republican struggle for Irish independence. "They should disband and they should do so sooner rather than later."
The interview also acknowledged that the IRA had secretly killed and buried "a small number of people" in the 1970s - the so-called "disappeared" - but said the organisation was not responsible for everyone who had gone missing over that period. The IRA had set up a special unit "under the command of one of our most senior officers" to trace the bodies.
The IRA spokesperson criticised the new anti-terrorism laws being introduced by the British and Irish governments following the Omagh bombing saying: "Giving more repressive powers to the RUC, a discredited sectarian paramilitary force, is like pouring petrol on a fire. This can only damage the potential for a democratic peace settlement."
Also the head of Sinn Fein's international department, Ms Bairbre de Brun, yesterday confirmed that Mr Martin McGuinness has had meetings with the head of the arms decommissioning body, Gen John de Chastelain, since the Belfast Agreement. Ms de Brun was speaking at the Desmond Graves Summer School in Dublin.