Trimble faces new challenge from Unionist hardliners

David Trimble, Northern Ireland's First Minister, is facing the latest in a series of challenges from opponents of the Good Friday Agreement within his own Ulster Unionist Party.

The party's 860-strong ruling Ulster Unionist Council will vote tomorrow on a motion from hardline members seeking to have Sinn Fein excluded from the coalition government of which Mr Trimble is the head. Although most observers believe that Mr Trimble will win the vote, and his own camp seems reasonably confident, pro-Agreement elements inside and outside the party are nervous that something could still go wrong.

Since the council officially makes Unionist party policy, a defeat for Mr Trimble would precipitate a serious crisis in the peace process. The sheer size of the council means that its decisions have become notoriously difficult to forecast accurately.

Unionist support for the Agreement has been on the wane for several years, with grassroots Protestants feeling that the peace process has disproportionately benefited republicans and nationalists. They believe that their cause has lost ground.

While Mr Trimble has been consistently critical of Sinn Fein, he has continued to serve as head of the administration, which includes two republican ministers, one of them Martin McGuinness.

His opponents in the party mostly favour keeping the Belfast Assembly going, but they would like to see Sinn Fein expelled from the government on the basis that the IRA is continuing with its paramilitary activities.

The two approaches have been set out in letters sent to all the delegates by Mr Trimble and his chief opponent, Jeffrey Donaldson, the MP for Lagan Valley.

In his letter Mr Trimble wrote: "We have forced republicans to accept the reality of partition. We have forced them to start decommissioning.

"The republican leadership tries to compensate for the collapse of its Irish unity project by allowing their hard men to engage in acts of subversion at home and overseas. This confirms that while they may have started the necessary transition from terrorism to peace and democracy, they have certainly not completed it."

By contrast, in his message Mr Donaldson said: "The IRA have committed murder, engaged in sectarian attacks, smuggled more illegal arms into the country and recruited more young people into their ranks. It is absolutely clear that they remain unreconstructed terrorists."

He said that he wished to preserve the Belfast Assembly but to devise a mechanism to remove what he called "Sinn Fein-IRA" from office, while completing the arms decommissioning process and securing the disbanding of all terrorist organisations.

Mr Trimble commended this week's government announcement of a monitor to keep track of violence as "a useful tool in the blame game". It would make republican violence impossible to ignore, he asserted. Mr Donaldson dismissed the move as "yet another foreign envoy parachuting in".

While the British and Irish governments and most other elements wish to see the ending of paramilitarism, they have set their faces against any approach that would in effect expel Sinn Fein from the process. They believe the key to the success of the process is the continued inclusion of republicans. In sharp contrast to Mr Donaldson's scepticism, Tony Blair has already indicated his personal belief that Sinn Fein leaders are serious about making peace.

Mr Donaldson also made several references to the Assembly elections, due in May next year, about which both factions in the Unionist party are apprehensive. The present manoeuvrings are seen by observers as being partly motivated by this nervousness.

The Ulster Unionists lost seats to the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists in last year's Westminster elections, and expect a further bruising encounter in May. Since there is no chance that the divisions within the Unionist party will be healed in time, it will face the electorate riven by factional fighting and internal disagreements.

To counter this, Mr Trimble is pressing the British Government to hold a referendum, on the same day as the election, on whether Northern Ireland should remain in the United Kingdom or join a united Ireland.

His calculation is that such a referendum would help to bring out the large number of Protestants, including many from the middle classes who normally do not vote.

The London and Dublin governments are so far resisting the idea of a referendum. They are worried that it would result in even further polarisation but without delivering the extra votes that Mr Trimble is seeking.