End to arms key to talks, says Trimble

THERE is little point in proceeding with multi-party talks in the North if the IRA refuses to address the need to give up all paramilitary activity, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, insisted last night.

In a hard-hitting statement issued after a meeting in Downing Street with the British prime minister Tony Blair, Mr Trimble warned unionist patience has been exhausted.

He also argued that people in the North wanted the republican movement to end its “love affair with the gun”. Mr Trimble was accompanied at the meeting by former Stormont ministers Reg Empey and Michael McGimpsey and North Down MP Lady Sylvia Hermon. Mr Trimble said: “Our discussions served to underline the need to maintain pressure on republicans to undertake ‘acts of completion’.