Northern Ireland's First Minister David Trimble has again given assurances that if the peace process enters a "crisis" over arms it will be temporary.

And he has said his resignation is just one of a number of "hypotheticals" if the IRA has not begun to start decommissioning by the end of January.

Speaking on the BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme on Sunday Mr Trimble said the peace process had run into problems before which had been overcome.

He said: "I want to say to people in NI is that even if we do have a crisis, I think it will be a temporary one, and I think we will be able to work our way through it in a satisfactory way."

Mr Trimble also moved to try to change the focus of his party's deadline for a start to IRA decommissioning to General de Chastelain's publication of his report for the International Commission on Decommissioning at the end of January.

He added: "We will meet on our party in 12 February to review the situation and when we set that date we knew it was coming after the report that de Chastelain would make, so we weren't putting deadlines and we are not trying to create a crisis in this situation.

"It was perfectly reasonable for us knowing what was going to happen to assess what has happened."

The UUP ruling council backed Mr Trimble in setting up the powersharing executive with Sinn before IRA decommissioning in December after he pledged that he and his ministerial colleagues would resign from the executive if there was no IRA decommissioning by the end of January.

But Mr Trimble indicated that he believes Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson will step in to pre-empt his resignation and a resulting collapse of the administration.

'Institutions will not be broken'

The Ulster Unionist leader said: "There are a number of hypotheticals here. That is one. The other is that the secretary of state has made clear that he would himself intervene in order to suspend the operation of the institutions and somehow find a focus on which we could work through this problem."

Mr Trimble added that until the general's report is published people should not "dwell on those hypotheticals and the problems there might well be".

But hardline unionists in Mr Trimble's party and the Democratic Unionist Party have been keeping his resignation pledge at the top of the political agenda.

The DUP this week called on Mr Trimble and his colleagues to "quit now" with them in a joint resignation from the executive to try to stop the implementation of the controversial Patten policing proposals instead of waiting until 12 February.

And UUP deputy leader John Taylor went on record to say that his party should collapse the executive if there was no IRA decommissioning by the end of January.

But Mr Trimble said he believed the institutions set up under the Good Friday Agreement could be resurrected if they were suspended.

He said: "I don't think it's going to be broken. I'm sure it is not going to be quite that situation.

"We never did expect this to be easy. We knew we were embarking on a very substantial operation. It was going to take some time and was going to encounter problems.

"It has encountered problems and we have managed to work through them and we will approach future problems in the same positive spirit."

Mr Trimble also moved to dismiss speculation that if the IRA sealed their weapons into bunkers the general would say they had been decommissioned.

He said: "He is not going to do that because General de Chastelain is bound by a legal framework there is legislation enacted. There are schemes that are made and those schemes define decommissioning."

'No negotiating Agreement'

Meanwhile Sinn Fein chairman Mitchel McLaughlin has accused unionists of constantly attempting to renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement.

Speaking after a meeting of the party's policy directing executive in Dublin on Saturday Mr McLauglin said Mr Trimble had "got himself on to a hook and created a crisis for us all" by letting his party nominate the date for movement on arms.

Mr McLaughlin added: "These processes require time and if people are expecting answers by 12 February, then I just wonder where that date came out of, and why it should be seen as a make-or-break date.

"I do not think that was in any way part of the Good Friday Agreement."