The IRA's entire arsenal of weapons has been put beyond use, the head of the international decommissioning commission confirmed yesterday.

General John de Chastelain said "very large quantities of arms, which we believe include all the arms in the IRA's possession", had been decommissioned.

He was immediately challenged by the Democratic Unionist Party to prove that all the weapons had been dumped.

Even though the British, Irish and US governments accepted the IRA had disposed of its vast arsenal, Gen de Chastelain refused to give a detailed inventory or declare how and where the weapons were destroyed.

His team of experts, and two clergymen acting as witnesses, spent a week being transported around Ireland in a blacked-out van to check and examine every gun removed from hidden bunkers.

Flame throwers, surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, rifles, machine guns, mortars, handguns, home-made and commercial explosives were examined and ticked off from a list provided by security chiefs.

At one stage, one of the churchmen hauled sacks of explosives, while the second said last night he was prepared to stake his life that the IRA had not held any weapons back.

Former Methodist president the Reverend Harold Good said the full scale of what he had witnessed dawned on him as the last rifle was put away.

He said: "That was a very significant moment. The last of everything.

"Nobody said a word, but we were all very conscious people were putting things away, the commission and ourselves, when that last weapon was put away.

"There was a silence and I'll not forget that silence."

Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish premier Bertie Ahern said they were satisfied the Provos had finally cleared out their arms dumps in the dawn-to-dusk operation.

But the Reverend Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said the public was being conned, citing the lack of precise details of how much was handed over.

He said: "This illustrates more than ever the duplicity and dishonesty of the two Governments and the IRA. Instead of openness, there was the cunning tactics of cover-up and a complete failure by Gen de Chastelain to deal with the vital numerics of decommissioning."

Even allowing for the disarmament, Mr Blair knows there is virtually no chance of all sides starting negotiations to restore the power-sharing executive at Stormont.

Martin McGuinness, chief negotiator of Sinn Fein, said: "This is a momentous day for peace.

"It is the turning of the final page in the whole controversy over IRA arms."

Mr Blair said: "The true importance of today is that these weapons can never again be used to inflict suffering and create more victims."

Mr Ahern, said: "The weapons of the IRA are gone, and are gone in a manner which has been verified and witnessed."