A monitoring body set up to review paramilitary ceasefires should be able to ensure that political parties in Northern Ireland do not have a paramilitary link, Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, said today.
Emerging from a lunchtime meeting with members of the South Antrim UUP Constituency Association in Templepatrick, the Upper Bann MP said his party remained focused on achieving an end to all paramilitary activity.
However, he was warned by one of three rebel MPs, Mr David Burnside, that his party would fare badly at the polls if the monitoring body was ineffective.
Mr Trimble was joined by South Antrim MP, Mr David Burnside, one of his sharpest critics within the party, after the meeting.
The UUP leader insisted: "Our party's position is what it has been since the suspension [of the devolved Assembly] in October last year and that is the transition must be concluded.
"We want to see what are called acts of completion, which involve an ending of paramilitary activity. "A monitoring body will be there to make sure that no secret element continues in existence underground.
"We will see the legislation and the proposals in a couple of weeks time and I look forward to that.
"But I hope that when it is published it will be in a form where people will see that whatever concerns they had, have been addressed and have been resolved." Mr Trimble said he hoped that the three MPs - Mr Burnside, the Rev Martin Smyth and Mr Jeffrey Donaldson - who have resigned the party whip at Westminster in protest at the Irish Government's involvement in the monitoring body, would reverse their action.
However, Mr Burnside said that he was still of the view that the monitoring body would not have the teeth to remove Sinn Féin from Government if the IRA remained in business.
"From my understanding both David and I and the House of Commons will look at the legislation in the two weeks we come back to Westminster," he said.