The Ulster Unionist Party has appealed to all members of the Orange Order to vote for the Belfast Agreement in next week's referendum.
The call came after Tuesday night's statement from the order's ruling body, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, that "as an organisation committed to civil and religious liberty" it could not instruct anyone how to vote but it was "unable to recommend the agreement to the people of Ulster".
The Democratic Unionist Party warmly welcomed the Grand Lodge rejection of the agreement.
"The agreement is day and daily being recognised by the unionist community in Northern Ireland as one that endangers the Union, and it will be finally rejected by them."
The order's ruling body for Belfast city supports fully the Grand Lodge statement, saying the agreement document is "fatally ambiguous, morally objectionable, and constitutionally flawed".
The County Grand Orange Lodge of Belfast said it could only be right to vote No. "A Yes vote is akin to political suicide, which like its human variety is irreversible."
In a new 46-page pamphlet entitled Peace Deal?, the DUP's justice spokesman, Mr Ian Paisley Jnr, said: "There is a common saying in Northern Ireland that `the Micks are pushing the Yanks, to push the Brits, to push the Unionists into a United Ireland'.
"The workings of the much-misnamed peace process give credibility to that claim. The talks process and its dangerous conclusion amount to nothing more than the concentrated efforts of the British and Irish governments, aided by Washington, to pressurise David Trimble into acquiescing in a programme of all-Ireland unity," Mr Paisley said.
The UK Unionist Party leader, Mr Robert McCartney, has rejected a challenge to a public debate with Mr David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party, He said he did not engage in direct communication with "representatives of parties fronting armed terrorist groups".
The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, claimed in Belfast yesterday that some officials in the Northern Ireland Office were operating to a unionist agenda, at the risk of alienating republicans and nationalists.
He said it was crucial for the British government to stand up "to hostility and resistance within its own system. I could give copious examples since Good Friday of how this resistance within the system, within the permanent government, has manifested itself on a whole range of issues."
Mr Adams dismissed as "absolute nonsense" a claim by Lord Alderdice that recent temporary releases of republican prisoners to attend the Sinn Fein Ardfheis could jeopardise the peace process.
Mr Adams also claimed Mr Ervine of the PUP had "overreacted in typical theatrical fashion" to the episode.
Questioned about "the disappeared", people abducted by paramilitaries whose bodies have never been located, Mr Adams said he had met some of the victims' families and given commitments to assist them if he could. He intended to keep those commitments.