BELFAST - ONE of Northern Ireland's deadliest paramilitary groups has dumped all of its weapons in front of independent witnesses, just ahead of a deadline that marks the latest step in the province's peace process.

The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and the body overseeing disarmament announced firearms, explosives and other ammunition had been given up, confirming what sources told Reuters at the weekend.

'We make no apology for our part in the conflict,' Martin McMonagle, a senior member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the political wing of the INLA, told reporters, some four months after the group declared an end to its armed struggle. 'We believe that conditions have now changed in such a way that other options are open to revolutionaries in order to pursue and ultimately achieve our objectives.'

The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) was set up by the British and Irish governments in 1997 in the run-up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of violence that cost 3,600 lives.

In one of the biggest steps since that accord, the parties in Northern Ireland's power-sharing government agreed last week a deal on transferring control of police and justice powers from London to Belfast. The commission did not specify how many weapons had been decommissioned, but said all arms under the INLA control had been surrendered.

The Official Irish Republican Army also completed decommissioning its weapons, the IICD said. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown added in a statement to parliament the last loyalist organisation the Southeast Antrim UDA had given up its arms.