IRA expected to announce today it is abandoning violence

The Irish Republican Army is expected to declare today that it is abandoning its violent struggle to end British control of Northern Ireland, according to senior officials in the British and Irish governments and in Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing.

The announcement has been predicted since last April, when Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams asked the IRA to abandon violence and join a strictly political battle to unite Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic. But the timing of the IRA's statement, and whether its language would be unequivocal enough to satisfy Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland who refuse to share power with Sinn Fein, has been in question.

Senior figures in the republican movement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the IRA had preferred to make the announcement on a Thursday, when the movement's weekly newspaper, An Phoblacht, is published. Those officials, as well as British and Irish government officials, said the final piece of a carefully choreographed series of events fell into place yesterday when the British government agreed to release Sean Kelly, a former IRA member who was convicted of killing nine Protestant civilians and his IRA accomplice in 1993 in a bombing meant to wipe out the leadership of a Protestant extremist group.

Kelly was freed in 2000, as part of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, but was arrested last month after the British government accused him of violating his parole by fomenting violence. Republicans said the charges were trumped up, and a Catholic priest who has been credited with containing violence in the volatile North Belfast area said Kelly was a peacemaker, not a troublemaker.

In a statement, the Northern Ireland Office, the British government agency that administers Northern Ireland, said, ''We can confirm Sean Kelly was granted temporary release by the Secretary of State on the expectation of the forthcoming IRA statement."

Kelly's release infuriated unionists, who consider Kelly a mass murderer and who say the peace process has become a one-way street of appeasement of republicans. In a statement, Sir Reg Empey, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, said: ''This government is groveling to republicans. It is a capitulation."

Unionist indignation over Kelly's release makes it unlikely they will be magnanimous toward the IRA's statement, which is expected to outline a stand-down by its volunteers, the destruction of its remaining arsenal, and the ending of all paramilitary activities, including recruitment, training, targeting, and intelligence gathering, according to British and Irish officials.

A senior Sinn Fein official said the IRA's decision to stand down was not subject to an ''army convention" of all IRA members, as some analysts had originally predicted. The official said the decision was ''leadership driven," meaning it was made by the IRA's seven-member ruling Army Council. The official said the decision followed extensive canvassing of opinion from the IRA's several hundred-member ''active service" units, and that there is no fear of a split.