Sir - Dennis Kennedy's article "Scramble to appease terrorists is abasement of democracy" (Opinion, May 10th) is yet another jaundiced diatribe propelled by anti-agreement sentiment.
His self-righteous analysis is either blissfully naive or intellectually dishonest. But either way it represents dead-end thinking about the past and the future because it is in denial of the historical cause of conflict on this island.
Despite Mr Kennedy's assertion that Ireland consists of two democratic states appeasing terrorists with illegal weapons, many people, north and south, recognise that these two states are themselves an abasement of Irish democracy and that legally held weapons are but a privilege born out of the principle "might is right".
Implicitly, that is why these two states have signed up to an international treaty - the Good Friday Agreement - with all its provisions for a new political dispensation on this island, including the overhaul of a partisan and discredited Northern police force. It represents, at last, a democratic attempt to correct a historic democratic deficit.
I note that Mr Kennedy belongs to the Cadogan Group, a so-called "discussion group". Perhaps his group should start discussing really dissenting views on Irish politics instead of cosseting itself in self-righteous subjective terms of what is and what is not democracy and legality. - Yours, etc.,
Finian Cunningham, Rostrevor, Co Down.