Trimble: IRA campaign over

The arms issue has dogged the peace process

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble has said he now believes the IRA will not return to an orchestrated campaign of violence in Northern Ireland.

But he has less than a week to convince a majority of the Ulster Unionist's 860-member ruling council that it should accept the IRA's offer to put their weapons "beyond use", and go back into a power-sharing assembly at Stormont.

If members of the ruling council disagree with Mr Trimble's assessment at their meeting on Saturday, his leadership of the UUP could well be at stake.

David Trimble: 'IRA campaign is over'

Speaking on the BBC1's On the Record programme on Sunday, Mr Trimble said: "I'm not saying that the future's going to be entirely free of violence.

"I think that the organised, coherent campaign that the IRA operated for 30 years is not going to come back again.

"There may be problems, there may still be violence, and the violence may come from dissident elements. It may even come from elements within the IRA.

"What I am saying is that the major, organised campaign has gone because... it was beaten."

'Goalposts shifted'

His comments come amid reports that rank-and-file unionists are "furious" that the deadline for decommissioning in the Good Friday Agreement has arrived with no disarmament.

Ulster Unionist MP William Ross noted the deadline for disarmament under the Agreement was 22 May and said the failure of paramilitaries to "surrender" weapons had damaged support for the accord in the unionist community.

Mr Ross said some UUP members who originally backed the accord were angry that the government had extended the deadline for decommissioning to next year.

Mr Ross said: "Many unionists believed that come today [Monday], if the weapons had not been surrendered and destroyed, then the Agreement would come to an end.

"What we have seen instead is the goalposts being shifted, a new deadline imposed and an attempt to convince people into going back into an executive with some form of words which don't guarantee decommissioning."

Earlier, a hardline Ulster Unionist said his party should not return to government with Sinn Fein unless they are certain the IRA is going to disarm.

Anti-Good Friday Agreement MP Jeffrey Donaldson was speaking on the BBC'1s Breakfast with Frost programme.

He said people could not understand why Mr Trimble forced suspension of the assembly executive in February on the basis that no IRA arms were decommissioned, but was now recommending a return to devolution without those weapons.

Jeffrey Donaldson: Certainties sought

He said: "We haven't got the certainty that the IRA are going to decommission. They haven't said they are going to decommission.

"They have used this term putting arms beyond use but only in the context of the removal of the causes of the conflict which they believe and assert are the British withdrawal and the ending of partition.

"Clearly from this statement, we don't have the certainty that the IRA are going to disarm, and in those circumstances, are we going to have Sinn Fein in government, Martin McGuinness as the minister of education without any clarity or certainty that the IRA are doing what they should have done two years ago?"

Mr Donaldson said that he had argued against calling next Saturday's crucial ruling council meeting, until the IRA had come back with something more specific on decommissioning.

Locked into government

However, on Saturday Mr Trimble said his party would not be locked into government with republicans if the IRA failed to deliver on decommissioning.

He told BBC NI's Inside Politics programme, that if the Ulster Unionist council voted in favour of returning the assembly executive, it would not be irreversible.

The ruling council vote is being seen as a defining moment in the party's history, Mr Trimble's leadership, and possibly the whole peace process in Northern Ireland.

Ulster Unionists are, however, bitterly divided over the latest deal.

Leading Ulster Unionist Sir Reg Empey has backed Mr Trimble in believing the IRA's willingness to let independent inspectors check its arms dumps, is a good enough basis to get back to working in government with republicans.