UUP draws up charter for elections

Ulster Unionists were today preparing to commit themselves to the winding down of all paramilitaries in Northern Ireland with a 10-point charter for their Assembly candidates.

As politicians in Northern Ireland prepared to hand in nomination papers for the November 26 election before today’s deadline, the Ulster Unionists were also expected to commit themselves to delivering acts of completion from paramilitaries.

Their 10-point charter to voters mirrors a resolution passed by the party executive last month before the recent stalled peace process deal involving Sinn Féin, the IRA and the British and Irish Governments.

Party sources said the charter also deals with security issues and the retention of the Royal Irish Regiment’s home service and opposition to any amnesty for paramilitary fugitives from justice.

The Ulster Unionists are also expected to promise that they will press the recently formed four-member international monitoring commission to act decisively if it finds evidence of breaches of paramilitary ceasefires.

The commission, comprised of former Assembly Speaker Lord Alderdice, former CIA deputy director Richard Kerr, ex-Irish Department of Justice official Jill Brosnan and John Grieve, who headed the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terrorist unit, monitors the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and paramilitary activity.

National SDLP leader Mark Durkan was today expected to raise the issue of sectarianism on the hustings.

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams was expected to hand in his nomination papers for the November 26 Assembly election and the loyalist Progress of Unionists were preparing to also return their papers.

The Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists were also set to unveil a new billboard campaign in east Belfast, playing on unionist concerns about Sinn Féin’s Gerry Kelly becoming the policing and justice minister at Stormont.