Published Thursday, 07 May 2009
Loyalist paramilitaries are also beginning to face up to the issue of decommissioning their weapons in the face of government threats to end the amnesty on handing over guns, according to the IMC.
While the commission's latest report examines paramilitary activity in the six months just before the recent dissident murders of two soldiers and a policeman, it comments on the impact of the incidents on the political process.
Violence
"The current ongoing violence is an attempt to destroy the peace process and return the community to the period of the violent struggle from which it has so painfully and relatively recently emerged," it stated.
"Dissident republicans are attempting to deflect the PSNI from maintaining community policing and so disrupt the increasing community acceptance of normal policing.
"In our view however this is a challenge and a testing of the peace process by the people who have always been violently opposed to it. It does not represent an unravelling of the peace process."
The four commissioners - John Alderdice, Joe Brosnan, John Grieve and Dick Kerr - launched the report at Belfast's Europa hotel.
Lord Alderdice, the former Speaker at the Northern Ireland Assembly, said the swift police response to the killings would have had a negative impact on dissident recruitment.
"I think there's no reason to believe that any momentum has been developed by them," he said.
"Although they continue to oppose the peace process and the direction taken by the mainstream republican movement they have never been able to unite around that," he said.
Commissioner Grieve said that, while the groupings remained dangerous, they did not have the capacity or resources to mount a sustained campaign of violence.
UDA, UVF
In regard to the main loyalist paramilitary groups - the UDA and UVF - the commission said there was a growing acknowledgement among their leaders that the decommissioning would have to be addressed.
The government has threatened to end the long running amnesty from prosecution for handing in weapons this summer if progress was not made.
Of the mainstream UDA, the commission said: "Because of the state of opinion in the UDA, the uncentralised nature of the leadership and their search for a quid pro quo for decommissioning, it is somewhat difficult to judge what turn events may take and when."
The IMC report said loyalists continued to engage in criminality and questioned why parts of the UDA appeared to be continuing to recruit members, albeit on an ad hoc basis.
But Lord Alderdice said he did not think there was any appetite within loyalist communities for the retention of paramilitary arms.
"I don't believe that loyalist communities as a whole believe those weapons are something that are a benefit to them as a community," he explained.
"We are not raising anybody's hopes but we are not discouraged by what we have seen and we think there are possibilities," he added.
Secretary of State Shaun Woodward said:
"The government's position is very clear. When I renewed the decommissioning amnesty for the final time in February, I asked the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning for a further report on progress towards decommissioning.
"That report is due in August and if there has not been substantial progress I will bring an end to the decommissioning legislation."
Members of Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) are due to carry out a further phase of their work in Northern Ireland in the coming weeks.