MR Robert McCartney, who heads his own party called "UK Unionist Party - Robert McCartney" in the Northern elections, yesterday attacked the Ulster Unionist Party as "rank amateurs" in the art of negotiation.
He accused it of allowing the Northern Ireland situation to become internationalised, and of conceding that the constitutional position of the North would be on the table at all party negotiations.
However, Mr McCartney declared that his first priority after the election would be to approach both the UUP and the Democratic Unionist Party to seek a common agreement on joint unionist strategy at the talks.
He would seek to define with them the unionist "bottom line" in these negotiations, and an agreement that if these basic principles were breached the three parties would either cease or suspend their participation "in unison".
At a press conference in Belfast, Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, who is on Mr McCartney's regional list for the election, with the possibility of being included in the party's negotiating team at the all party talks, said nationalists were trying to weaken the Union by introducing the topic of the Government of Ireland Act.
Dr O'Brien said if the Irish nationalist parties were serious about their alleged commitment to the principle of consent they would have taken steps to remove "the miasma of ambiguities" which surrounded them under Irish law.
To do so, the nationalist parties would have had to amend Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution, and this they had never tried to do.
For unionists, the threat contained in Articles 2 and 3 was central to these elections.
Dr O'Brien said Mr McCartney stuck to the point: the defence of the Union - "and that is the kind of leadership unionists need, in this time of great and growing danger."