The Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, will mount a robust defence of the Belfast Agreement when he addresses his party's annual conference in Enniskillen on Saturday, according to UUP sources.
The conference programme, which was selected by senior party officers, avoids any motions critical of Mr Trimble's leadership, although that is unlikely to prevent anti-agreement members from attacking his stewardship and political strategy.
While Mr Trimble is expected to uphold the agreement, he will again argue that the main obstacle to its full implementation is the absence of an IRA commitment to disarm.
Mr Trimble, with his Assembly colleagues, was responsible for drafting the motion certain to provoke the most earnest debate. It seeks to copperfasten the UUP demand of "no guns, no government" and attempts to divorce the SDLP from Sinn Fein should the IRA fail to decommission.
The motion supports the creation of an inclusive executive but calls for loyalist and republican paramilitaries to demonstrate their commitment to democracy by beginning the process of disarmament. In the absence of decommissioning it calls on "constitutional nationalists [the SDLP] to form an administration based on democratic principles", i.e. with Sinn Fein excluded.
Prominent anti-agreement UUP politicians are given a platform at the conference, but they are generally down to deal with relatively anodyne motions. The Lagan Valley MP, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, is the reply speaker to a motion dealing with economic matters, while the East Derry MP, Mr William Ross, has the reply to a motion seeking to restrict Sinn Fein fundraising.
The Young Unionist Council, which was subjected to a tongue-lashing from Mr Trimble last weekend for endorsing an anti-agreement stand, is allowed a motion calling for greater financial aid for victims' groups.
Aside from the debate on "guns and government", the other contentious motion deals with the Patten report on policing. Here the reply speaker is a Trimble supporter, Mr Ken Maginnis, the party's security spokesman. This motion contends that Patten would create a blueprint for "Mafia" policing regimes in Northern Ireland, a view that is sure to win favour with the overwhelming majority of the 500 or so delegates.
Mr Trimble will deliver a 30-minute keynote speech at 11.15 a.m. when, according to party sources, he will maintain that the agreement is the best way forward for unionism, and for Northern society as a whole.
While considerable effort has gone into carefully managing the conference, there is nevertheless almost certain to be criticism of the agreement and of Mr Trimble, both explicit and implicit. MPs such as Mr Ross and Mr William Thompson are unlikely to miss this opportunity to attack the Good Friday accord.
An interesting innovation this year is an hour-long afternoon conference session on the media perception of unionism. Speakers are the Belfast journalist Eamonn Mallie, Dean Godson of the Daily Telegraph, and commentators and polemicists Ruth Dudley Edwards and Eoghan Harris.
