ALMOST on the eve of polling day, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) yesterday launched a poster campaign depicting a splintered Union flag and warned that the pro Union vote was in danger of being split many ways in Thursday's election.
At a press conference that sent out clear distress signals on behalf of his party, the UUP deputy leader, Mr John Taylor, blamed the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the UK Unionist party leader, Mr Robert McCartney, for allowing a situation whereby the multiplicity of unionist parties could permit the nationalist parties to make big gains in the election.
However, the party could offer no solution to the electoral crisis which it perceived, other than to appeal for a strong unionist vote consolidated behind one unionist party - the UUP. The 11th hour posters warn voters that the choice is between "Division and Weakness, or Unity and Strength".
Mr Taylor claimed the list system for the election had been favoured by the Irish Government, Mr John Hume and Dr Ian Paisley. "This was, of course, a means of damaging the pro Union vote which, regrettably, Mr Paisley did not understand. The list system is a means of dividing up the strength of the pro Union vote in Northern Ireland."
He said there could be "great damage" done to the cause of the Union if the pro Union vote was divided up between the 11 pro Union parties on the ballot paper.
Mr Taylor said in many constituencies, there was "a great danger that a larger number of pan nationalist candidates will get elected than ought to get elected. It is time every pro Union voter in Northern Ireland realised whey they are being conned by the DUP", he said.
In a new variant of the UUP's demands in regard to the June 10th all party talks, Mr Taylor emphasised that there must be a fixed timetable for decommissioning paramilitary arms.
"We are not going to talk to terrorists or their political representatives unless they qualify and become accepted as democratic constitutional parties - which is very unlikely, the way things are going." A ceasefire in itself would not be sufficient. Sinn Fein would have to agree with the British government a timetable of decommissioning.
In a separate BBC interview, the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, denied that he was "running scared". Defending himself against charges by the DUP that he was willing to negotiate the Union, he agreed that he had said the Government of Ireland Act was only a technicality.
All of die clauses of this Act, except three, had been repealed 23 years ago. The bottom line was in fact the Act of Union and the UUP was determined that this should not be endangered. "We are not putting the Union on the table. We will be there to defend the Union", he said.