The guessing game continues

BBC NI Political Editor Stephen Grimason assesses the mood as the Ulster Unionists prepare for another crucial ruling council meeting.

Settle down for another week of the Ulster Unionist guessing game.

Will they or won't they be back in government with Sinn Fein? No-one can really say.

On one reading of the situation, party leader David Trimble would have been holding his Ulster Unionist Council (UUC) meeting last weekend if he thought he could win.

The fact he has pushed it back until next Saturday is as clear an indication as any that he is going to have to come from behind in his campaign to sell the Hillsborough deal.

Those who have taken the time to ring around UUC delegates in the past week have encountered confusion, anger and a general reluctance to buy into the deal.

David Trimble will be largely trading on his authority if he is to turn the ship round.

The battle is also going to become increasingly personal.

Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley has already branded Mr Trimble the IRA's salesman, for a deal which will ultimately lead to a united Ireland.

But Trimble lieutenant Sir Reg Empey hit back, accusing the DUP of hypocrisy: If they were so opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, he wondered, why had they attended more than a hundred committee meetings with Sinn Fein in the assembly.

By the end of this week, that exchange will probably be regarded as being on the minor end of the abuse scale.

David Trimble: Can he clinch deal?

There will be a temptation for Mr Trimble, if the number-crunching suggests he might not make it, to sell the deal to the party on a conditional basis.

In the past we have had post-dated resignations and other deadlines to give the party an escape hatch if things do not go according to the leader's plan.

Republicans have insisted the likely IRA reaction to anything other than wholehearted UUP acceptance of the deal, would be to pull its offer on weapons off the table.

But there is already a hint of "conditionality" about Mr Trimble's approach.

He has denied his recommendation to the UUC will set out a timetable for decommissioning, but has said it is simply common sense, that if the IRA does not deliver on the weapons issue there will be consequences.

Battle plans are being drafted by the yes and no camps within unionism for the countdown to next Saturday

In an interview for the Inside Politics programme on BBC Radio Ulster, he threw the words of the IRA back at them when they talked in their statement about making politics irreversible.

Mr Trimble said: "It will only be irreversible for us if it is irreversible for them."

Mr Trimble is walking a tightrope. He is telling his party members they will not be trapped in government with Sinn Fein if nothing happens on decommissioning, but is trying not to upset the republican applecart by applying pre-conditions.

Battle plans

Battle plans are this weekend being drafted by the yes and no camps within unionism for the countdown to next Saturday.

The most telling blows however, will be struck, not in public, but in private.

There will be plenty of photo-opportunties and concerned visits to constituencies over the next seven days, but the telephone lines will tell the real story.

Both sides have been calling up the 850 or so Ulster Unionist Council members, particularly those regarded as the "middle third" of the council.

A third of that body will never accept the deal and another third are Trimble supporters. The real battle is for those who can be persuaded.

Can David Trimble do it? It will be Herculean task, but he can. Even he would at this stage, however, privately say he cannot be sure.

The odds are 50-50, so no change there then in a peace process which has often delivered breakthroughs from exactly that position.