Should democrats in Northern Ireland, as urged by Dr Garret FitzGerald last Saturday, swallow their principles and put into government people clearly linked to the IRA? If they do, will that enhance the prospects for stable democratic society, or will it be the final act of appeasement?

Last year everyone knew the price of agreement was a generous accommodation of nationalist aspirations and a substantial degree of appeasement of republican terrorism. In return, the Belfast Agreement promised peace and a seismic change in republican attitudes. It required that:

all participants recognise the legitimacy of Northern Ireland, based on the principle of consent.

all participants affirm their total and absolute commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means.

all participants affirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations.

Only the most naive actually believed that Sinn Fein/IRA had had the change of heart such commitments would necessarily indicate, but further assurances came from Tony Blair, first in his letter to David Trimble and later in his blackboard promise that there would be no place in the government of Northern Ireland for those who used or threatened violence. These undertakings made it possible for numbers of people to vote Yes. Many, however, remained intensely sceptical about any republican conversion, and pinned their hopes on a more pragmatic scenario. This was that republicans were being drawn into a trap, within which they would have to choose between two stark alternatives: a genuine acceptance of the agreement, including the legitimacy of Northern Ireland and the renunciation of violence, substantiated by the crucial test of IRA "decommissioning"; or, failing that, exclusion from the executive and an end to prisoner releases. The pressure would be on republicans to make the final break with violence.

But in practice the pressure on the terrorists has been spasmodic and slight. The IRA has continued to commit acts of violence. It has insisted it will not give up arms. Sinn Fein spokesmen declare themselves committed to peaceful methods, but continue to praise the IRA and blatantly ignore that part of the agreement which commits them "totally and absolutely" to oppose any use of force or threat of force by others.

Many supporters of the agreement lived with these offences against its wording and spirit, and with the readiness of both governments to tolerate them. Their hope was that the plan might still be working, and that, in the end, republicans would be faced with the a clear choice between delivering on "decommissioning" and the reality that, without it, there could be no place for Sinn Fein in an executive.

Such hopes were destroyed when the Secretary of State ordered the Assembly to proceed with the creation of an executive. This was an unequivocal statement that London was ready to place in government people it knew were inextricably linked to an armed terrorist organisation, and that the UK government's interpretation of the Belfast Agreement was no longer that sold by Mr Blair during the referendum campaign.

This was the parting of the ways for David Trimble, and for many who had voted Yes last May. Now the pressure is on supporters of the agreement to swallow their principles and put first "the prospect of creating a stable democratic society in Northern Ireland" by allowing Sinn Fein into government before IRA "decommissioning".

The ease with which the United Kingdom government and people like Dr FitzGerald are prepared to accept the enormity of placing in government people linked to armed subversion is breathtaking. The justification for such an appalling sacrifice of principle is the prospect of a stable democratic society in Northern Ireland. How real would such a prospect be in these circumstances?

The past three decades of violence have not been about civil rights, or democracy - the key demands of the civil rights campaign were met almost entirely before the IRA campaign began - but about the belief of a small minority that it had a right to overthrow the state by armed terrorism. The IRA campaign was not a pursuit of justice, as its apologists now say at every opportunity, but rather a terrorist assault by fanatical armed nationalism on a democratic state.

This physical-force tradition in Irish nationalism led de Valera in 1922 to defy the majority in the Dail and start a civil war; it led successive self-styled inheritors of the mantle to resort to arms against the State, and to the murder and terror campaigns of the 1940s, the 1950s and the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

The most fundamental tenets of republicanism are that the all-island Irish Republic proclaimed in 1916 exists as of right, and that that right can be "asserted in arms" until an independent government for the whole island is established. Both are incompatible with the Belfast Agreement.

To proceed now with the agreement is to believe that after the most sustained, and most successful guerrilla campaign in any modern democracy, bringing unimagined recognition and prestige to its leaders, the IRA is now ready to abandon these fundamental articles of faith.

This total ideological surrender is on offer, we are told, for the price of two seats in an executive to govern Northern Ireland. All that is required is sufficient compromise of principle to spare republicans the embarrassment of making such capitulation too transparent.

It is true that considerable changes in republican thinking have taken place. The IRA's belief that it could win an outright victory and force British withdrawal was beginning to die by the end of the 1980s, to be replaced by a tactical mix of physical force, politics and propaganda. But there has never been any renunciation of violence, nor any acknowledgement that the right to use violence to achieve an Irish Republic does not exist.

Sinn Fein's constant reminders that the IRA ceasefire is a "cessation of military actions to help forward the peace process" make it very clear that the ceasefire does not involve any renunciation of violence, merely a suspension of certain types of violence in specific circumstances. Thus the ceasefire can in no way satisfy the Belfast Agreement's requirement for total and absolute commitment to peaceful means. ????????????????ein's public affirmation of such a commitment has be to judged in the light of its continued close links to an organisation still wedded to violence.

A token, or even significant, act of "decommissioning" by the IRA after the forming of an inclusive executive, as envisaged by Dr FitzGerald, would mean little. By admitting Sinn Fein to government while the IRA retained its arms, the government, and the democratic parties, in an enormous sacrifice of principle, would have acknowledged the legitimacy of the IRA and its right to use force.

The effectiveness of physical force would have been graphically demonstrated by the elevation of its apologists to high public office. Subsequent "decommissioning" could be presented by the IRA as part of a process of demilitarisation under the agreement, and thereby involve no concession of principle as to that organisation's "right" to bear and use arms.

Can anyone believe that this is a basis upon which to build a stable democratic society? At best, following Dr FitzGerald's advice might buy off a section of republicanism at frightening cost in terms of principle, while strengthening in the longer term the physical-force tradition in Irish nationalism, and making inevitable a return to wholesale violence.

Dennis Kennedy is a lecturer at Queen's University Belfast and a political commentator