The most important thing to say about last week's talks in Shropshire is that they should not have been necessary. The Belfast Agreement, Tony Blair's promises at the time of the referendum in 1998 and subsequent IRA undertakings all made clear what should have already happened on decommissioning.
If Ulster Unionists allowed some vagueness into the language of the agreement it was because we wished to give the republican leadership space to deal with its hardliners. We were never at any stage willing to compromise on democracy. No democracy can allow political parties to have armed wings which take the law into their own hands and kill or maim those who offend them.
What is the use of introducing rafts of human rights or equality law when associates of parties in government make their own illegal decisions on capital punishment and torture?
In the agreement we were, however, willing to be realistic about the difficulties facing those who stated that they wished to bring 30 years of unspeakable violence to an end.
Our problem now is that the bona fides of the Sinn Fein leadership is in doubt. The problem was bad enough 18 months ago when David Trimble first had to threaten resignation to get republicans to move on weapons.
It is now much worse. After 13 months of fully functioning inclusive government and still no movement to "initiate a process that will completely and verifiably put IRA arms beyond use", is it any wonder that what little confidence there was in the Sinn Fein leadership is ebbing away?
The bright spot in this otherwise dismal train of events has been the way in which most political and media opinion has come to accept the necessity for decommissioning.
Few can now see why, as an ostensibly democratic party, Sinn Fein needs to retain within the republican movement a capacity for violence, never mind to actually be associated with an organisation involved in killing, wounding, threats and evictions.
The coalescence of democratic opinion around a consensus of non-violence is a necessary if not sufficient condition for the eradication of violence from politics on this island. To be really effective, all of society, North, South and further afield, needs to join in the condemnation.
Many of those whom Eamonn Delaney, in his autobiographical account of his career in the Department of Foreign Affairs, calls "sneaking regarders" must now also emerge as real defenders of core democratic principles.
Unfortunately, some opinion-formers in the media might still come within Mr Delaney's category.
A striking example recently appeared in Vincent Browne's column (The Irish Times, July 4th). This analysed in detail the lack, as he saw it, of any requirement in the Belfast Agreement for the IRA to give up its weapons. He concluded that the IRA's obligation to decommission was not a matter of legality but merely because the peace process requires it.
The IRA, or its representatives, can in this view continue to legitimately bargain decommissioning against a lengthening wish list of requirements.
Any school child might notice that what Mr Browne considers not to be legally necessary is in fact illegal. It is illegal to organise a private army, illegal to hold arms without a permit, and of course illegal to kill, wound or threaten for political or any other reasons. It is illegal in the UK, as it is in Ireland and in every other democracy.
The IRA, and the loyalist paramilitaries, must disarm to stay within the law. Their associates who wish to be in government have an obvious, particular obligation to do so. That the Belfast Agreement set a formal date for this process is neither here nor there. The obligation exists independently of any agreement and would do so in any democracy on the planet.
What the Belfast Agreement recognised, of course, was the difficulty in enforcing this legal obligation. This is why it took the form it did in persuading the paramilitaries to stop killing and to give up their capacity for violence. The importance of decommissioning was always central to the agreement.
The agreement contains a distinct section on decommissioning which states with utter clarity: "All participants reaffirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations".
Participants also affirmed their opposition to the use of violence or threat of violence for any political purpose. As long as republicans retain their capacity for violence, this threat remains implicit in everything we do, including last week's talks.
Vincent Browne, and others like him, place great stress on the fact that Sinn Fein, not the IRA, was party to the agreement, and on the undertaking that participants should "use what influence they may have to achieve decommissioning within two years", i.e. by May 2000.
Since the IRA, UVF, UFF and other paramilitary organisations are illegal, they could not be directly represented in the talks, even if acknowledged IRA men have turned up at the crucial stages of subsequent negotiations.
Each of these organisations instead had a legal political party front organisation representing them in the lead-up to the Belfast Agreement. No one, except perhaps the sneaking regarders, thought of Sinn Fein, the PUP or UDP as anything other than representatives of paramilitaries.
Three years after the agreement, it remains clear that democratically-elected governments still cannot force the paramilitaries to disarm and disband. At the same time, it has also become clear that the majority of democrats in Northern Ireland are unwilling to share government with Sinn Fein unless its IRA associates put their weapons beyond use.
Those who side with the democrats against the parties which retain their links with paramilitarism will continue to wish to highlight the distinction between them, and to insist on legality. If most of society does the same we may be able to make progress.
Dermot Nesbitt is an Ulster Unionist Party member of the Assembly