What a sad, sad week it has been. All those poor people killed or maimed by the monsters of Omagh. All those funerals. All those moving words of grief spoken by ordinary souls.

All those hypocritical mouthings by politicians whose belief that they had successfully appeased the men and women of terror was shown up for what many of us feared it to be - a terrible case of vain-glorious self-delusion.

The proof of their folly lies in the dead men, women and children (including those unborn) of a small, peace-loving town which was chosen to feel the full force of unrestrained evil.

Those who rejoiced when the Good Friday peace accord was reached were a little presumptuous. It was not the end. Nor was it even the true beginning of the end, because too many of those responsible for drawing up the deal and signing it were too willing to believe that they were able to succeed where so many others had failed.

Because of their desire not to let anything get in the way of their place in history, they made too many concessions. They decided to overlook the fact that the IRA refused to decommission its armoury of weapons. They agreed to the release of murderers with no guarantees that the sickness of mind which had attracted them to terrorism in the first place would not draw them back to it. They relaxed the anti-terrorism laws.

Now their kindness and trust has been repaid with the lives and the limbs of innocents slaughtered by those who read a message of weakness into this rush to act as if all had suddenly come right in Ireland after centuries of hatred.

When will the lesson ever be learned? You cannot negotiate with evil, or compromise with it, or appease it. You have to cage it or, preferably, destroy it.

There should be no further release of any terrorists. That would not only keep potentially dangerous people where they can do no harm. It would also show those who are currently waging war against civilisation via indiscriminate bombings that they can expect the harshest of treatment.

As things stand, they must feel they have very little to fear.

Even if they are caught, and convicted, someone will quickly start a campaign to have them freed on the grounds of a miscarriage of justice. Or they will be released in an amnesty linked to some other, future, doomed-to-failure peace initiative.

In fact, it's time for the death sentence to be restored for terrorist murder.

The only fool-proof answer to the sort of evil we saw last week at Omagh is to do away with the people in which it lives and thrives.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.