The Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, has played down yesterday's developments at Stormont, saying there would be no "make or break time" for the Belfast Agreement. Addressing pupils at Down High School in Downpatrick, Co Down, Mr Trimble said he was not prepared to talk about a Plan B should the agreement collapse.
"I suppose the politically correct answer would be that there is no Plan B. The truth is if we started publicly discussing Plan B, it would mean that our priorities have changed. What we need to focus on is making Plan A work." Asked if the IRA statement on the table would be enough for the UUP, Mr Trimble replied: "No idea." He added that everybody should wait and see what the package on offer was. The UUP leader said he had had a "friendly" meeting with his Assembly party earlier in the day at which everybody was "in good heart". He was, however, not prepared to comment on speculation he was about to call a meeting of the 800-strong Ulster Unionist Council. "That is not for me to decide and we are not yet at a point where such a decision would be appropriate." He said the main question on his mind did not concern the dreaded D-word - decommissioning - but whether there would ever be real peace in Northern Ireland.
"Will there be peace? Will there be normal democratic practice and institutions? We are not going to have peace by any stretch of the imagination if there are private armies in existence, even if they are not active. "Until they stop and transform themselves into people engaged in normal democratic practice we will not have peace. But the Good Friday agreement is giving them the opportunity to come in from the cold." Mr Trimble said he believed the institutions to be set up had to be "deliberately inclusive".
The anti-Belfast Agreement unionist Mr Peter Weir has predicted there will be a split in the Ulster Unionist Party if Mr Trimble pushes ahead with a step-by-step deal that would see Sinn Fein in an executive ahead of IRA decommissioning.
Mr Weir, a unionist Assembly member who has lost the UUP whip, told a branch meeting in south Belfast last night that "it would be impossible for the party to hold together" if there was any reversal of the "no guns, no government" policy.