differences on political issues". This took two aspects: decommissioning of weapons held by paramilitary groups; the normalisation of security arrangements in Northern Ireland. The participants to the agreement comprised two sovereign states (the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland) with armed and police forces involved in the Troubles. Two political parties, Sinn Féin and the PUP, were linked to paramilitary organisations: the IRA and the UVF respectively. The UDP, which was linked to the UDA, had withdrawn from the talks three months previously. The multi-party agreement committed the parties to "use any influence they may have" to bring about the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years of the referendums approving the agreement. The process of normalisation committed the British government to the reduction in the number and role of its armed forces in Northern Ireland "to levels compatible with a normal peaceful society". This included the removal of security installations and the removal of special emergency powers in Northern Ireland. The Irish government committed to a "wide-ranging review" of its Offences against the State legislation. The agreement called for the establishment of an independent commission to review policing arrangements in Northern Ireland "including [the] means of encouraging widespread community support" for those arrangements. The British government also committed to a "wide-ranging review" of the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland. A date of May 2000 was set for total disarming of all paramilitary groups. This was not achieved leading the assembly to be suspended on a number of occasions as a consequence of unionist objections. A series of rounds of decommissioning by the IRA took place (in October 2001, April 2002 and October 2003) and in July 2005 the IRA announced the formal end of its campaign. Loyalist decommissioning did not follow immediately. In June 2009, the UVF announced it had completed decommissioning and the UDA said it had started to decommission its arsenal. On 6 January 2010, the UDA announced that it had put its weapons "verifiably beyond use". The decommissioning was completed five weeks before a government amnesty deadline beyond which any weapons found could have been used as evidence for a prosecution. Prisoner release Both the British and Irish governments committed to the early release of the approximately 400 prisoners serving sentences in connection with the activities of paramilitary groups, provided that those groups continued to maintain "a complete and unequivocal ceasefire". Cases were