The Sinn Fein MP for Mid-Ulster, Mr Martin McGuinness, has stated that the Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, had not softened his position on decommissioning, despite saying his party could re-enter an executive with Sinn Fein without prior IRA disarmament.
Mr McGuinness said Mr Trimble was useful to the peace process only if he was prepared to implement the Belfast Agreement. "If David Trimble as unionist leader is not prepared to do that, if he is prepared to subject this process consistently to threats of walkout, then David Trimble is no good to this process," he said in Derry yesterday.
"What we need to do is get the British government back on board so that any future unionist leader, or David Trimble if he remains as unionist leader, clearly knows and understands that they are dealing with a British government that is going to stand rock solid beside the Irish Government in the implementation of the agreement," Mr McGuinness told the BBC.
The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, meanwhile urged Mr Trimble to confront the anti-Belfast Agreement wing of his party at the annual general meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council on Saturday.
Mr McLaughlin said last night he would give neither a "positive nor a negative response" to Mr Trimble's weekend remarks in Washington that he could go back into the executive with Sinn Fein without prior IRA decommissioning, provided there was a guarantee that decommissioning would follow.
Mr McLaughlin said Sinn Fein expected talks soon with the UUP and these would depend to an extent on what happened at the UUP Council meeting. "What we are hoping to hear is that the Ulster Unionist Party accepts that its policies (on decommissioning) had not worked and would not work," Mr McLaughlin said.
