The "Real IRA" announcement of its "complete" ceasefire was generally welcomed in Northern Ireland. But most politicians insisted that the full weight of the laws should be brought to bear on those responsible for the Omagh bomb.
The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said it was the political pressure that it and others exerted which forced the "Real IRA" to declare its cessation. He nonetheless repeated that the new emergency legislation introduced by the British and Irish governments was "wrong".
Mr McLaughlin said such "draconian" legislation was not necessary, but did not go so far as to say that ordinary criminal law should apply against those who carried out the Omagh bombing.
"Sinn Fein has made its position clear . . . We have made it clear that there would be no shelter, succour or support within the republican community" (for those responsible for the Omagh massacre). The "Real IRA" had got the message delivered by Sinn Fein's Mr Martin McGuinness that "no door should be open to them".
He did not comment on an earlier Irish Times report that last week the IRA had warned about 60 "Real IRA" or 32-County Sovereignty Committee members that if a ceasefire were not declared within 14 days they would face the consequences.
Mr McLaughlin called on the Continuity IRA, the only paramilitary organisation not on ceasefire, to call a cessation.
The North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, said he was "glad that these people have come to their senses and realised the futility of their actions". The ceasefire, however, did not "change the enormity of what they have done and their culpability for it".
The RUC in a cautious response promised it would "relentlessly" pursue those behind the bombing and other earlier attacks. "Ceasefires in themselves are not, of course, a guarantee of peace and we once again call on all organisations and all individuals involved in violence from whatever quarter to stop doing what they should never have been doing in the first place."
