Trimble the focus of quarrelling divisions within the UUP

Before yesterday evening's meeting of the UUP ruling executive, where its 120 members aired their views on the Patten report …

Before yesterday evening's meeting of the UUP ruling executive, where its 120 members aired their views on the Patten report on policing and the Mitchell review, Ulster Unionists continued their quarrel.

About 30 people gathered outside the UUP HQ to register their support for the agreement. Amid their chanting, the West Tyrone MP, Mr William Thompson, said he still said "No to the Belfast Agreement because it is bad for Northern Ireland".

When it was put to him that the demonstrators had a different view, he replied "I'm not worried about what they say."

Instead, he stepped up his attacks on Mr David Trimble, by accusing him of "betrayal". At the weekend he had said Mr Trimble should "consider" resigning, but yesterday he said he should resign.

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Mr Thompson said the UUP leader, boosted by liberals within the party, had presided over a "failed policy" of supporting the agreement which even his deputy, Mr John Taylor, realised was not capable of being implemented.

The Patten recommendations on policing were further evidence of Mr Trimble's poor leadership, he said. "He has betrayed the people who gave their lives against terrorism in Northern Ireland when he sat down with the representatives of terrorism."

Mr Trimble should step down as party leader, Mr Thompson said, because in signing the agreement he also "agreed to the Patten Commission and allowed it to set about the destruction of the RUC.

"There is tremendous anger within the party at what's happening with the RUC and what's happening with the agreement and you only have to look at recent election results to see how that anger is reflected outside."

But UUP Assembly member Mr Duncan Shipley Dalton claimed the anti-agreement bloc within the UUP was causing great damage to the party. Contrary to the views of Mr Trimble and the UUP leadership, his belief was that his party should have endorsed, rather than rejected, the Way Forward document in July.

Mr Shipley Dalton, speaking before yesterday's meeting, said he believed that had the UUP signed up to the deal, the IRA would have decommissioned by May next year. He was also critical of anti-agreement unionists within the UUP: "I believe that David Trimble is the best leader that unionism has had in the past 50 years. He is still the best leader."

Referring to the demonstrators, he added: "But what he needs is for some of the people like these to start phoning up the likes of Jeffrey Donaldson and Willie Ross and the others, and try and get those monkeys off David's back so that he is given the chance to actually move forward without having all the time to listen to their whingeing."

Ms Jean Coulter, an anti-agreement unionist, was critical of these views. "In terms of Northern politics, the mark of the nappy has not left his rear end," she said.

The pro-agreement Assembly member, Mr Dermot Nesbitt, said he still had faith in the agreement, but insisted that republicans must move on arms for the UUP to enter into government with Sinn Fein. "It is now time for those who have used violence to, as it were, jump ship and jump to the democratic process.

"It is for them to jump ship - not for me," he told BBC Radio Ulster yesterday. "I'm committed. I'm resolute. I want to see peace as does David Trimble and, I believe, the overwhelming majority within unionism that supports what David Trimble is trying to do".

Meanwhile, the Sinn Fein MP for Mid-Ulster, Mr Martin McGuinness, has claimed that the UUP is "running scared" of implementing the agreement.

Mr McGuinness, who is due to meet President Clinton in Washington today, said that Ulster Unionists were locked in conflict over the agreement because of a failure to accept the implications of the accord. In a statement issued yesterday to coincide with his visit, he said "Ulster Unionists are running scared of the equality agenda, power sharing, and the All-Ireland institutions agreed on Good Friday 1998".

Referring to the divisions within the UUP, Mr McGuinness added: "Most unionist politicians know exactly what they want. Ian Paisley wants to wreck the Good Friday agreement. William Thompson wants David Trimble to resign. John Taylor and Jeffrey Donaldson both want to be leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, but David Trimble, apart from decommissioning, doesn't know what he wants.

"The opposition to the implementation of the Good Friday agreement from within the Ulster Unionist Party is firmly rooted in the total failure of the UUP to accept and absorb the full import of the outworkings of the agreement Mr Trimble and Mr Blair entered into with the representatives of nationalist Ireland."

Mr McGuinness said if the agreement were to be saved, the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, must make it clear that unionist opposition to the deal would not deflect him from delivering the changes promised in the agreement.