The British government will suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly rather than see Mr Trimble carry out his threat to resign as First Minister, the Rev Ian Paisley predicted tonight.
He said suspension had been hinted at during an hour-long meeting in Downing Street between his anti-Belfast Agreement DUP, the British Prime Minister and the Northern Secretary Dr John Reid.
The peace process has been thrown into fresh crisis by Mr Trimble's threat to resign his post on July 1st if there has been no move by the IRA on decommissioning.
The IRA says the arms impasse can be resolved but it will not act in response to "unionist ultimatums or on British terms".
Emerging from his meeting with Mr Blair, Mr Paisley said suspension appeared to be in the forefront of government thinking.
"I think they will suspend. I have taken from some hints that I heard today that they will suspend.
"We do not believe that Mr Trimble can resign and his Ministers still keep their jobs - I think there is no other option. What else can they do?"
But Dr Reid dismissed talk of suspension, saying that it had not been discussed during today's meeting with the DUP.
"It's not my intention to be thinking about closing down elements of the Good Friday Agreement." He said the meeting with the DUP had been "civil and courteous".
Mr Paisley, who was accompanied to No 10 by two of his party's three new MPs, Mr Nigel Dodds and Mr Gregory Campbell, said: "It was not a meeting where there was shouting. It was a meeting where we put our view as forcibly as we could."
He said the DUP had presented Mr Blair with a document called "An Alternative Process" in which the party put its case that the agreement did not have the support of most unionists.
The document says that a clear majority - perhaps two-thirds - of unionists supported anti-agreement candidates in the UK general election and the British government had failed to recognise the results of the election.
It added: "As the present arrangements do not command unionist support it must be the responsibility of the government to assist in finding an accommodation which does."
The document also said that the "trite mantra" that 71 per cent of people voted for the agreement in 1998 and therefore this must be the settlement for all time was "not only intellectually unsatisfactory, it is also factually inaccurate".
Meanwhile, both the Taoiseach Mr Ahern and the North's Ireland's deputy First Minister Mr Seamus Mallon, put renewed pressure on the IRA to act to put its weapons beyond use.
In the Dáil Mr Ahern spoke of the "reality" of a requirement for movement on IRA arms to head off the peace process crisis.
Mr Ahern, who earlier this week presented one of his gloomiest assessments yet on the prospects in Northern Ireland, said there was unlikely to be any development on linked issues in Northern Ireland - such as demilitarisation by the British army - until there was "substantive progress on decommissioning".
He added: "Some people are trying to say that decommissioning had no part in the Good Friday Agreement, but it is in it.
"I know that putting deadlines is always unhelpful in Northern Ireland. But the reality is that if the British and Irish governments are to succeed in making sure that the will of the people is adhered to, that [decommissioning] is one of the issues that has to be dealt with.
"I would just ask all concerned to make sure that over these days they help to create the circumstances where we can do that. I think they well know how they can do that."
Mr Mallon repeated his call for IRA moves on decommissioning.
He said the failure to disarm was not only against the wishes of the unionist community and the British government, it was against the democratic wish of the Irish people following the Belfast Agreement.
In a separate move US President Bush's special envoy to Ireland Mr Richard Hass had talks in London with Dr Reid and flew to Belfast for a two-day round of discussions with the political parties to see if there was anything Washington could do to help the situation.
PA