THE Ulster Unionist Party leader says he expects to meet President Clinton this week in Washington to discuss Northern Ireland. Mr David Trimble is in the US until Wednesday for a series of meetings with US officials. He is accompanied by the former UUP leader, Sir James Molyneaux, and Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, the party's honorary secretary.
They will meet the National Security Adviser, Mr Anthony Lake, in the White House and there is a "high level of probability" they will meet the President.
Mr Trimble said Mr Clinton's recent statement on Northern Ireland was even tougher than the position of the British Prime Minister, Mr John Major.
The UUP leader cited what he said was the President's response to a question about Northern Ireland in his post election press conference several weeks ago. He said the President had stated what was needed was a complete cessation of violence - not a ceasefire - a complete cessation of violence. Then he went on to say that all parties needed an assurance that the killing would not start again either in Northern Ireland or Great Britain."
Mr Trimble commented: "That is looking for something even more precise than John Major is looking for. John Major is a bit more generous to the Provos than Clinton." One should "not assume that the White House is always automatically on the nationalist side".
Asked if he shared Mr John Hume's view that an IRA ceasefire was still possible, Mr Trimble said Mr Hume's proposals, which he assumed were the same as Sinn Fein's, were described to him by a British cabinet minister as "impossible".
Mr Trimble said: "There is not the slightest prospect of talks with Sinn Fein because there is not the slightest prospect of Sinn Fein meeting the necessary requirements."
But Mr Trimble did not completely rule out the possibility that Sinn Fein could be brought into talks after an IRA ceasefire "within a fairly short period of time" if it used "quite clear, convincing language, immediately stopped all paramilitary activity and made all the right noises with regard to the Mitchell principles and decommissioning".