Inside the UUP: A major confrontation between Mr David Trimble and Mr Jeffrey Donaldson today has the potential to cause a split in the new Ulster Unionist Party Assembly grouping on the first day it meets at Stormont.
The UUP leader, Mr Trimble, and Lagan Valley MP Mr Donaldson are intent on directly dealing with the issue of leadership when the party's 27 MLAs gather at Parliament Buildings, Stormont, today.
Mr Donaldson repeated his call on Mr Trimble to resign yesterday.
As Trimble loyalists stood firm with their leader, Mr Donaldson refused to say whether he might defect to the DUP if Mr Trimble remained as leader.
"I think David Trimble should do the honourable thing and stand aside as leader, and then we can start to rebuild as a party. The fact is the party is not going to reunite under Trimble," Mr Donaldson told The Irish Times yesterday.
"If the party ignores what the electorate is saying to it then quite frankly it is going to be punished again and again in future elections."
Mr Donaldson and four more of the party's MLAs - Mr David Burnside, Ms Arlene Foster, Mr Norman Hillis and Ms Nora Beare - are opposed to the Belfast Agreement, while some others are sceptical.
If a majority of the Assembly team reconfirms its support for Mr Trimble today then Mr Donaldson will be faced with the choice of calling another Ulster Unionist Council meeting to challenge Mr Trimble or with some or all of those four defecting to the DUP or going independent.
"I am not ruling anything in or out," said Mr Donaldson, who is already pledged to co-operate tactically with the DUP, when asked might he join the Rev Ian Paisley's party.
Another option would be for Mr Donaldson and others to leave the party and devise a working accommodation with the DUP.
Trimble supporter and newly-elected Strangford MLA Mr David McNarry upped the ante on this issue yesterday by stating that Mr Donaldson should leave the UUP if he could not support Mr Trimble.
"Even if Jeffrey takes four other members of the party with him, we are better off being 22 and united. Donaldson must decide whether to be inside or outside the party. He can't be both. Everyone must come off the fence on this issue," Mr McNarry told the Sunday Times.
These comments infuriated Mr Donaldson, who described Mr McNarry as a "political loser".
MLAs such as Mr Michael McGimpsey, Mr Jim Wilson, Mr Dermot Nesbitt and even Sir Reg Empey - a possible alternative leader to Mr Trimble - have urged against any challenge to Mr Trimble in the current circumstances.
"We should not now be attracting attention onto ourselves. We should wait and see can the DUP deliver on their promises to the electorate," said Mr McGimpsey.
The South Belfast MLA said he did not want Mr Donaldson or anybody else to leave the UUP.
"In my view personalities are getting in the way of politics, and that has to stop. My view on the leadership is that there is no one else in the party capable of shouldering that burden other than David Trimble.
"In my opinion this is the worst moment in time for Ulster Unionists to be shouting and yelling at each in television and radio studios and in the papers. We should be keeping our comments for the privacy of party meetings," added Mr McGimpsey.
