Two weeks ago I attended the funeral of Cyril Stewart, a recently-retired RUC officer, at my local Presbyterian congregation in Armagh city. He had been murdered by republican terrorists while late-night shopping with his wife.

e was the second-last person to be killed by terrorism in Ulster before the Northern Ireland Agreement. After one of the busiest weeks in nearly 35 years in elected politics, I was encouraged by the words of thanks and support from members of the congregation.

In the long days and nights holed up in Castle Buildings, Stormont, there was not time to consult with constituents or many party officials. Instead instinct came into play. Would the unionist community, driven for years to say "No", make the break? When the final document arrived, all those years representing a maligned community came into play. Exhausted as I was, I had to discern the wood from the trees. Was it the right package for me, and would the people who elected me buy it?

There was much in the document which I knew I could denounce. If our team had decided to reject the document we could have walked out to cheers from many unionists. On the other hand, I knew I would have been isolated at Westminster, lecturing the deaf. Unionism would have been more marginalised than ever.

When the new agreement is put to the House of Commons, I fully expect every single Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MP to back it. I would not have seen Ulster's unionist community accepted back into the British mainstream in my lifetime.

When the Anglo-Irish Agreement passed through the House a couple of dozen Conservatives voted with the Unionists against it. Frankly, the idea that it was going to be rescinded through persuasion and pressure at Westminster, rather than through negotiation, was looking increasingly like self-delusion. Margaret Thatcher had the humility to admit she should never have signed it over the heads of the majority in Northern Ireland but, in a House with such a crushing Labour majority, that is little comfort.

The Anglo-Irish Agreement finally fell on Good Friday. The days when another State undemocratically acted as a proxy for a group of citizens in the United Kingdom are over. But, as Peter Robinson of the DUP admitted, the Anglo-Irish Agreement was never going to simply die unless moderate nationalists could be convinced that there was an alternative which satisfied them while meeting unionism's democratic concerns.

David Trimble and our team succeeded in negotiating away the most insupportable nationalist elements of the original draft which I could not have supported with a 40ft pole. These had found their way in by the IRA threatening the Dublin Government to break its ceasefire unless the agreement contained a mechanism to inveigle Northern Ireland into a 32county Republic. That mechanism has gone and can be seen to have gone. I urge sceptical unionists to compare John Major's framework documents with the new agreement.

In its place is a commitment on the part of unionism to set up feasibility studies to consider the merits of cross-frontier and all-Ireland implementation bodies in 12 specific areas. They are not revolutionary. An all-Ireland canal management authority does not represent a significant threat to my citizenship and, besides, a unionist would be present at every North-South meeting carrying a veto. After all, I was a minister in the old Stormont government which sent delegates to a Council of Ireland, which was set up explicitly with the purpose of uniting Ireland, and created the Foyle Fisheries Commission, which looks after Lough Foyle which is bounded by British and Irish territory.

Once the new assembly and other institutions are in place, I envisage the quality and quantity of co-operation with our neighbour which would have pertained had it not been for the IRA's campaign and the offensive territorial claim of the Republic's Constitution which underpinned it. The North-South dimension of the agreement will not create 80,000 jobs as Albert Reynolds once claimed, but nor do I see it having a negative impact on the economy.

The issue unionists have raised most often with me in recent days has been the release of convicted terrorist prisoners. Qualifying prisoners, so long as their paramilitary group is observing a ceasefire, will be released after a maximum of two years after the new arrangements come into force.

Naturally, this generates strong emotions from their victims. I very narrowly survived an assassination attempt in 1972, for which no one was ever convicted. What has been missed by the IRA and some unionists alike is that the bulk of those prisoners who qualify were set for release within a similar time-frame anyway.

I was pleased that the moves on prisoners were balanced by real commitments of money to support the victims of terrorist violence and that the long list of pledges to support the Irish language were balanced, after UUP pressure, by a recognition of the Ulster-Scots linguistic tradition.

The nationalist community will enjoy the right to express their cultural identity freely, but in a way sensitive to the majority's British way of life.

Unionism can look forward to a new beginning with the return of democratic control, in partnership with others, to a local assembly. I believe that the opportunity Easter 1998 has created cannot be allowed to be lost through violence. It is the duty now of both governments to put in place the necessary security measures sufficient to allow Ulster's people to give their verdict in a peaceful atmosphere. Otherwise, I see more funerals ahead.

John Taylor is MP for Strangford and UUP chief negotiator