As the headlines say, peace of a sort may again be within our grasp, but the euphoria cannot disguise the shoddy truth that this is peace on the IRA's terms, and peace as the IRA defines it. The obscene spectre is raised again of the representatives of still-armed terrorism being placed in public office in Northern Ireland at the insistence of London and Dublin.

This latest agreement marks the clearest abasement to date of two democratic governments in their scramble to appease political terrorists. It goes further than ever before in de facto recognition of the legitimacy of the IRA, of its right to hold arms, and its right to dictate the terms under which the question of arms is to be tackled. There is no fundamental challenge to the physical force tradition in Irish nationalism.

The Taoiseach, in his determination to see Sinn Fein back in ministerial office, is surely in breach of the Constitution.

Article 6 of Bunreacht na hEireann states that the right to raise or maintain military or armed forces is vested exclusively in the Oireachtas, and that no military or armed force, other than a military or armed force raised and maintained by the Oireachtas, shall be raised or maintained for any purpose whatsoever.

The IRA statement refers to "our arms" and agrees to the inspection by third parties of "our arms dumps". It thereby declares itself an armed force, patently not raised or maintained by the Oireachtas. If any of those dumps are in the territory of the Republic, and the Government co-operates with both the IRA and "third parties" in their inspection, then the Government is surely subverting the Constitution by conniving at the continued existence of an unauthorised armed force.

This is not just a piece of legal argument. The assertion of parliament's exclusive right to maintain armed forces was included in both the Free State 1922 constitution and de Valera's 1937 Bunreacht at times when the State itself was openly challenged by the IRA.

In some ways the IRA today is stronger than it has been at any time since 1923, and its very existence constitutes a challenge to the legitimacy and authority of both the Irish and British states. Yet it seems that for at least the next 12 months the authorities both North and South are ready to co-operate with an illegal terrorist organisation in an arrangement that allows that organisation to maintain its illegal armoury, presumably without interference from the State.

What happens beyond June 2001 remains unclear. The IRA statement does not abjure violence; it does not undertake to cease being an armed organisation, it simply promises to "initiate a process that will completely and verifiably put IRA arms beyond use", under certain conditions. Those arms will remain IRA arms, under IRA control, and will presumably remain available for use if the conditions are not met.

The so-called confidence-building measure proposed by the IRA for the independent inspection of a number (probably three) of arms dumps is meaningless in terms of the decommissioning of illegally-held weapons, and indeed is of much greater significance in terms of recognition of the IRA's right to hold those arms.

Can one believe, as the two governments and promoters of the agreement argue, that this is all a great smokescreen behind which the IRA is, effectively, surrendering, and that its commitment to put its arms "completely and verifiably beyond use", is tantamount to its going out of business as a terrorist organisation?

If it is surrendering, then it is doing so on remarkably generous terms, and with assurances that everything will be done to help it gain its goals by non-violent means. At every turn Northern Secretary Peter Mandelson keeps saying there must be no question of surrender by any side; Bertie Ahern has echoed this.

Thus speak the representatives of two democratic states which have for 30 years vowed to use all resources to defeat murder and destruction. If there is no surrender, and no victory, what we have is a draw, and there can be no honourable draw between, on the one hand, democracy and the rule of law, and on the other, terror.

The IRA statement lists the causes of conflict as Partition and British rule in Northern Ireland. It says the current political process can lead to the resolution of those causes of conflict by peaceful means - in other words British withdrawal and Irish unity can now be achieved through the peace process. Those unionists who still support the agreement do so because they believe it cements Partition, and that nationalist acceptance of the consent principle means the effective abandonment of any claim to Irish unity as of right. If the unionists look like being right, how long will IRA arms remain "beyond use"?

This agreement looks like yet another desperate throw to preserve "inclusivity", to keep Sinn Fein/IRA on board. It is far too generous to terrorism to offer real hope of stability.

Perhaps the last real defender of democracy is now that most unlikely body of men, the Ulster Unionist Council.

Dennis Kennedy is a member of the Cadogan group, a Northern Ireland-based political discussion group.