Trimble campaigns for NI accord

Party leader will sell Stormont message across province

David Trimble has said Ulster Unionists would be consigned to the political wilderness if they do not accept a proposal to restore Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive.

Mr Trimble now has less than a week to convince the 860-member Ulster Unionist Council, before their meeting on Saturday, that the IRA offer to put its arms beyond use is genuine.

Speaking at a news conference at his party headquarters in Belfast on Monday he said that if his party voted against accepting the package of proposals to restart devolution, it would allow the IRA "off the hook".

"Saying No to this will only serve to consign unionism to the political wilderness and who knows for how many years," he said.

Mr Trimble also issued a warning to unionists who favoured the continuation of rule from Westminster rather than sharing power with Sinn Fein.

"It will be direct rule with a heavy green (nationalist) tinge to it, with Dublin taking an even bigger say in our affairs, with unionists left with no say at all."

If the party refuses to accept his position of putting the offer from republicans to the test by going back into a government including Sinn Fein, his leadership could be in doubt.

The issue has deeply divided the Ulster Unionist Party.

On Sunday, Mr Trimble said he believed the IRA's campaign of violence was finally over.

'Goalposts shifted'

But his comments came amid reports that many rank-and-file unionists were "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 1998 peace accord were angry that the government had extended the deadline for decommissioning to next year.

Mr Ross said: "Many unionists believed that come today, 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."

Jeffrey Donaldson: Certainties sought

Earlier, another hardline Ulster Unionist MP, Jeffrey Donaldson, said his party should not return to government with Sinn Fein unless they were certain the IRA was going to disarm.

Speaking on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme he said people could not understand why Mr Trimble forced the 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 disarmament.

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 a 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.

However, Mr Trimble has said the party will not be locked into government with republicans if the IRA fails to deliver on the arms issue.

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.