Trimble attacks hardliner's 'negative' campaigning

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble today launched a fierce attack on hardline rivals as he claimed nationalists had become first-time stakeholders in Northern Ireland’s society.

With his party under serious pressure in a number of key constituencies in Thursday’s General Election, the First Minister in the power-sharing executive said the Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists had nothing to show for 30 years of negative campaigning.

Even though they were opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, he said the DUP relished the Stormont Assembly and claimed senior members Peter Robinson, the outgoing MP for east Belfast, and Nigel Dodds would take up ministerial positions again once the election was over.

The vast majority wanted the Agreement to work, but the DUP and Sinn Fein wanted it to fail.

Mr Trimble, who has threatened to quit as First Minister unless the IRA begin disarming their weapons by July 1, said: ‘‘Two sides of the same coin, they want to control Northern Ireland on their terms.

"The DUP, relying on bluster, have the delusion that they can go back to yesterday. Sinn Fein, relying on intimidation and lies, look for a tomorrow in which we are run jointly by London and Dublin.’’

Some Unionists, he said, had failed to recognise the extent of the party’s gains since the Agreement’s signing in April l998.

Mr Trimble told a business meeting in Belfast: ‘‘Arguably, the most important thing to come out of the last few years has been the fact that nationalists, perhaps for the first time since partition, have become stakeholders in this society.’’

He added: ‘‘If the majority of nationalists are content with these structures and now feel at home in Northern Ireland then we have achieved something very special. For Unionism it makes the future secure.’’