Weir joins Donaldson on platform opposed to agreement

The IRA should hand over up to 60 per cent of its arms before Sinn Fein is allowed into a Northern Ireland executive, the dissident UUP Assembly member, Mr Peter Weir, said last night.

Mr Weir, along with fellow anti-Belfast Agreement UUP member Mr Jeffrey Donaldson MP, was addressing a meeting in Craigavon, Co Armagh, of the Union First splinter group, which campaigns against the agreement. They were joined on the platform by five UUP MPs - Mr William Thompson, Mr William Ross, Mr Roy Beggs, the Rev Martin Smyth and Mr Clifford Forsythe, the MP for South Antrim.

This is understood to be the first time that Mr Forsythe has teamed up with the UUP "No" camp. It means that six of the UUP's 10 MPs are now opposing the agreement.

Mr Weir lost the whip on Tuesday because the previous day he had opposed a special report, supported by the other UUP Assembly members, outlining how devolution might be established in March.

Mr Beggs said his son, Mr Roy Beggs jnr - an Assembly member who is perceived as anti-agreement but who, nonetheless, obeyed the party whip on Monday - would make it clear to Mr David Trimble how he would vote in the crucial vote in February designed to open the way for a 10member executive. This is seen as an implicit indication that his son will also break ranks if Sinn Fein is allowed into the executive before decommissioning begins.

About 140 people at Craigavon civic centre last night heard Mr Weir state that, as a believer in unionist unity, he was deeply saddened by the present divisions in constitutional unionism. He called on the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, to exclude Sinn Fein from the executive - a demand which was echoed by Mr Donaldson.

Mr Donaldson warned that the UUP would collapse should it not maintain its line on seeking to exclude Sinn Fein if the IRA did not disarm. "Token gestures will not be enough," he said.

"It is clear to me that the vast and overwhelming majority of unionists would not accept the proposition of Sinn Fein-IRA taking up ministerial office in an absence of decommissioning of IRA weapons and an end to IRA violence," he said.

"Were the Ulster Unionist Party leadership to travel down that road they would be in clear breach of the commitments which they gave to the people, and their credibility with the people would be shattered," added Mr Donaldson.

Mr Weir said that "a few guns and a few pounds of Semtex would not be sufficient to allow Sinn Fein into an executive. As we are 40 per cent of the way through the period of the agreement, and as 60 per cent of paramilitary prisoners have been released, the IRA should hand over between 40 and 60 per cent or even more of its armoury.

"Whatever the initial handover is, it must be done in a clearly verifiable way and brought to swift completion," he said.

Additionally, he demanded that the IRA declare a "formal end to war" and to so-called punishment attacks, "targeting and surveillance" and "criminal activity", and "return the bodies of the disappeared".