The Rev Ian Paisley has launched the DUP election campaign with a vitriolic attack on the Ulster Unionists, the British government and Sinn Féin.
Citing the party's election slogan, "It's time for a fair deal", Dr Paisley blamed Mr David Trimble for what he called a catalogue of casualties since the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
Addressing DUP candidates and party workers in Belfast, he said Northern Ireland's position within the UK was weakened to the point where Dublin "now has as much say over us as Westminster has".
He condemned the release of paramilitary prisoners and accused the Stormont bodies of institutionalising sectarianism and guaranteeing "SF/IRA gunmen a place in government" which led to a range of alleged abuses of power. This was the legacy, he said of the "push-over charter of Trimble unionism".
Dr Paisley said Ulster Protestants were the victims of kicks received in the house of their so-called friends.
"They have been lashed by the fascist rule of well-armed, well-financed and well-directed blood-greedy republicans," he added.
He said that as far as the British government was concerned, nothing was sacrosanct. "So intent is the Blair regime in destroying Ulster's proper place within this United Kingdom that it is even prepared to cast into the negotiating pot the right of the people to vote." Mr Trimble "sat on the fence," he alleged, adding that the UUP leader had the audacity to "further insult a deeply wronged people by telling them that the last five years were years of wonderful progress".
He castigated Mr Trimble's claim, repeated in the UUP's first election broadcast on Monday evening, that the agreement contains the potential to transform Northern Ireland and make it something approaching a normal society. "The truth is that the so-called Good Friday agreement has the potential to destroy our province and unless we destroy the agreement, we will be destroyed forever," he said.
He rallied DUP members: "This Ulster of ours has had a rotten deal through terrorism, treachery and lying. That rotten deal is the product of a rotten agreement. We believe that every man in Ulster has a right to attain the aim of our election slogan - It's time for a fair deal."
His deputy leader, Mr Peter Robinson, resumed the attack on the UUP. He accused it of not taking risks for peace as it had claimed. "They have sacrificed the security of the unionist community to placate a vicious enemy. They have placed the future of the Union in the hands of those who are pledged to destroy it." He said Mr Trimble had adopted DUP policy on not sitting with Sinn Féin in government, regarding IRA decommissioning and on his policy announcement on Monday not to propose or vote for anyone for the positions of first or deputy first minister in the next Assembly.
"They elevated Sinn Féin/IRA into government and allowed them to stay there in spite of all the IRA's terrorist activity. And now they talk tough. Who do they think they are kidding?" Mr Robinson said Mr Trimble and "his team of incompetents" must never again be given the opportunity to negotiate for unionism.
He forecast that another four years of the Belfast Agreement would result in Mr Martin McGuinness or Mr Gerry Adams as Deputy First Minister; that Mr Gerry Kelly would be Policing or Justice Minister; that Sinn Féin/IRA would be permanently in government and that there would be more all-Ireland government. "Trimble's agreement, which is destroying unionism and the union, can be ended in 30 days," he said.
The DUP is fielding 40 candidates in the 18 six-seater Assembly constituencies and is confident of increasing its total of 20 Stormont seats.