Trimble to call for poll on united Ireland

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble is to call for a poll on a united Ireland next year, in his speech to party members at the Unionists’ annual general meeting today, UUP sources indicated today.

In a surprise move Mr Trimble, Northern Ireland First Minister, will urge the British and Irish Governments to go to the electorate next May to see if Northern Ireland should leave the United Kingdom.

Mr Trimble, who is addressing his party’s ruling council at its annual general meeting in Belfast, wants the poll to take place on the same day as next year’s Northern Ireland Assembly Elections.

Mr Trimble’s proposal will be seen as a direct response to comments from leading Sinn Fein figures in recent weeks, but Unionists should begin to consider how they could live in a united Ireland.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams told the World Economics Forum in New York that Republicans and Nationalists could not force Unionists into a united Ireland.

He called on Unionists, during the Forum in New York, to engage with Nationalists in a debate on the type of united Ireland they could live in.

The party’s national chairman Mitchel McLaughlin also claimed that a united Ireland was achievable for Nationalists and for Republicans within the next two decades.

Mr Trimble’s proposal to have a border poll on the question of a united Ireland comes just days after senior colleague Sir Reg Empey urged Unionists to fight Sinn Fein’s attempt to drive Northern Ireland into a United Ireland.

However, it would be at the British government’s discretion whether a poll would be conducted.

It is not believed the government would seek the opinion of the Northern Ireland people unless they believed there was the serious prospect of constitutional change.

Observers also point to the tactical nature of Mr Trimble’s call to have the poll on the same day as the Assembly elections.

Unionists believe they have suffered in recent elections from a poor voter turnout and that a border poll would motivate their supporters to go the ballot box.

Mr Trimble was also expected to signal in his speech today that he reserved the right to take whatever punitive action was necessary to force further IRA decommissioning.

The IRA put an unknown quantity of its weapons beyond use in the presence of the international disarmament bodies’ chairman General John de Chastelain last October.

The move followed threats from the Ulster Unionists ministers that they would pull out of the power-sharing government at Stormont.