The DUP deputy leader, Mr Peter Robinson, vowed to fight all the way yesterday after he lost a two-pronged legal challenge to the future of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
In the High Court in Belfast, Mr Justice Kerr dismissed Mr Robinson's application for a judicial review of the elections of Mr David Trimble and Mr Mark Durkan as First and Deputy First Ministers and the decision of the Secretary of State to delay the next Assembly election until May, 2003.
At the hearing earlier this month, Mr Robinson's lawyers argued that as Mr Trimble and Mr Durkan had not been elected within the six weeks laid down in law, the Secretary of State should have dissolved the Assembly and called an immediate election.
But in yesterday's reserved judgment, Mr Justice Kerr said there was nothing in the Belfast Agreement which required the election of the First and Deputy First Ministers to be held within a stipulated time.
The judge said: "The Belfast Agreement was designed to achieve political progress on the basis of a broad consensus between the political parties.
"It is inimical to that concept to impose an inflexible time limit on one of the critical elements of the plan for government of Northern Ireland." He said the purpose of the Act providing for government "would be frustrated if the time limit were to be applied in a rigid, inflexible fashion.
"The challenge to the validity of the election of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister fails, therefore." Turning to the date of the next Assembly election, the judge said the Secretary of State had a wide discretion and having held the election of Mr Trimble and Mr Durkan to be valid was entitled to take that into account.
"The Secretary of State has concluded that there is a prospect of stable government for Northern Ireland and this had influenced his decision to select 1 May 2003. I consider he was entitled to have regard to that factor," said the judge.
The judge will rule on awarding costs for lawyers for Mr Trimble, Mr Durkan and the Secretary of State next month.
Afterwards Mr Robinson said he was going to appeal and speculated that the case would go to the House of Lords in London.