Political leadership involves taking huge risks to achieve political goals, the Ulster Unionist Party Assembly member, Dr Esmond Birnie, told a constituency meeting at Sheepbridge Orange Hall, Co Down.
Dr Birnie, who recently suggested a formula whereby Sinn Fein might take seats in an executive without prior IRA decommissioning, said leadership demanded producing actual solutions and facing unpleasant and unpopular realities.
He did not repeat his recent suggestion that Sinn Fein could be allowed into an executive on the basis of a post-dated guarantee that if the IRA did not subsequently decommission, the party's two proposed ministers, Mr Martin McGuinness and Ms Bairbre de Brun, would resign their seats.
But he insisted that risk-taking was essential in the current situation. "Political leadership has to mean something more than taking the easy option just to please your home crowd," Dr Birnie said last night.
That also involved republicans taking risks. "We have said over and over again that we will share power with nationalists, republicans and Roman Catholics. But we will not share power with a nationalist, republican or Roman Catholic who wants to bring a gun into the executive room," he said.
"And we will not enter the blind alley of power-sharing with Sinn Fein on nothing more than the hope that the IRA will deliver."
The British and Irish governments and the constitutional parties should be demanding that republicans "compromise with democracy" and prove they are committed to the peace process rather than the UUP having to "compromise with terrorism".
He continued: "If the terrorists cannot or will not make that compromise for the sake of the creation of an executive founded upon trust, then the governments and the constitutional parties should draw the only obvious conclusion: Sinn Fein and the IRA are entirely insincere and hypocritical."
Dr Birnie used his speech to round on the DUP and other anti-agreement unionist parties. "Voting for Ian Paisley in the hope that he will save Ulster is about as sensible as voting for Mystic Meg in the hope that you will win the lottery," he said.
"Paisley has done nothing for Ulster other than to have made unionism a laughing stock around the world. He has been the recruiting sergeant for negativity . . . He has gained nothing."
