I think Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness should win the Nobel Peace Prize for this one.

The IRA unilaterally called a ceasefire in 1994 (which of course was later called off, and then reinstated in 1997), have refused to revert to the war footing ever since, and are now unilaterally disarming, even though they were not official parties to the GFA.

I don't know of any other party to the conflict that has come further than the IRA has towards peace. And I can't think of another conflict where the ceasefire held so firmly for so long.

Sinn Fein and the IRA really deserve the kudos for this one.

I'm not optimistic about the British response, considering they've never been able to do this sort of thing successfully before without withdrawing and leaving a civil war behind them. But then, we've never seen this level of negotiation before with a British withdrawal of it's military forces from a colony.

We'll see what the result is. The British spy network doesn't need the towers in Armagh to continue their campaign, after all.