The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) can no longer justify holding on to any weapons, the head of the Church of Ireland declared today.
The call by the Archbishop of Armagh, the Most Rev Alan Harper, for the group to decommission comes amid the continuing row over a £1.2 million peace grant for loyalist areas.
Margaret Ritchie, Northern Ireland's Social Development Minister, has threatened to withdraw funding for the Conflict Transformation Initiative (CTI) unless the UDA met her 60-day deadline - now passed - to start disarming.
She is expected to make a statement on the issue to the Stormont Assembly later today.
In his first presidential address to the Armagh Diocesan Synod, the archbishop backed the CTI's attempt to shift loyalists away from violence.
"I believe that you should believe that the war is over," he told the UDA. "Therefore, whatever justification you may have pleaded for retaining weapons of lethal force, that justification no longer exists."
The archbishop said he recognised that loyalists may be struggling to feel secure and respected enough to set down their guns, and that there was deprivation in many of their neighbourhoods needs urgent attention.
"I do not believe, however, that retaining weaponry will make any contribution whatsoever to addressing and solving those problems."
The archbishop emphasised the major contribution which can be made by community development, including the work of the CTI.
"My appeal to the UDA is not to be deflected from the path of decommissioning at the earliest possible moment."