Trimble wants electorate to focus on `new beginning'

Mr David Trimble will today set out his vision for an "inclusive and pluralist Northern Ireland" as the Assembly election campaign…

Mr David Trimble will today set out his vision for an "inclusive and pluralist Northern Ireland" as the Assembly election campaign enters its final week.

In a keynote speech to a selected group of business people in Belfast the Ulster Unionist leader will address the issue of cultural identity and appeal for "courage, understanding and tolerance" to see Northern Ireland through the marching season. He is expected to acknowledge the "hurt" caused on all sides of the community through the long years of conflict.

Mr Trimble's speech represents a determined bid by the party leadership to shift attention from the damaging issues of prisoner releases and decommissioning and focus on the "new beginning" offered by the Belfast Agreement.

However, in an interview published in today's Irish Times, Mr Trimble continues to place a question mark over Sinn Fein's automatic entitlement to seats on the proposed Northern Ireland Executive and rejects the demand from Mr Seamus Mallon, deputy leader of the SDLP, that the executive be formed next month.

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Yesterday the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, reiterated his call for voters to give their transfers to other pro-Agreement parties in Thursday's poll, in order to "keep the wreckers out". He said that the No campaigners were "yesterday's men" and offered no alternative. The Belfast Agreement had "struck a blow to the past" and voters now had a chance to map out the future.

The Alliance Party urged voters to make full use of their transfers, arguing that close outcomes were likely in many constituencies. "The seventh, tenth or thirteenth choice you write down on your ballot paper may be as important as your first preference", said the party's candidate for Foyle, Mr Colm Cavanagh.