The Republic of Ireland is held together by anti-British sentiment and religion, the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party Mr David Trimble has claimed.
The Chicago Sun-Timessays Mr Trimble made the comments to an editorial meeting of the paper yesterday.
"If you took away Catholicism and anti-Britishness, the State doesn't have a reason to exist," the paper reports. "Its institutions are British and American," he claimed.
Earlier this year, the North's former first minister caused outrage when he declared the Republic to be a "sectarian, mono-ethnic, mono-cultural state to our south".
In his original speech he also referred to the Republic as "pathetic" though he omitted the word when delivering the address. However the text of the speech had been seen by journalists who included the word "pathetic" in their reports.
A spokesman for Mr Trimble confirmed the comments to ireland.comthis evening. He said they were a response to a question during a very extensive briefing on the current situation in the North.
"It was one little piece of information selectively taken from a briefing he gave to the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times," the spokesman said.
"He made the remarks when he was giving them a rundown on what's happened since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement and the Assembly suspension," he added.
Mr Trimble was in Chicago, a city where local government has been dominated by Irish-Americans for decades, to address the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.
Additional reporting AFP