UUP will boycott govt with SF - Trimble

Ulster Unionists will boycott any new coalition government in Northern Ireland that includes Sinn Féin, party leader David Trimble pledged today.

With republicans engulfed in a massive crisis over alleged IRA bank robbing, money laundering and murder, the UUP chief said he had no idea how to restore unionist trust in power-sharing.

Mr Trimble also used his speech at his party’s annual meeting in Belfast to savage Ian Paisley’s rival Democratic Unionists for failing to broker an end to IRA crime at the last round of peace talks.

Amid speculation of electoral pacts with the DUP, he insisted his party would not be swept off the political battlefield.

But as Sinn Fein held its annual conference in the face of unprecedented pressure, Mr Trimble issued a warning over any plans to revive a Stormont administration that collapsed over alleged IRA espionage.

He said: “We do not intend to re-enter an Executive that includes Sinn Féin.

“If republicans wish to be included in talks then it must rebuild its credibility by doing all the things it should have done and present itself as a purely peaceful democratic movement with no private army.”

With the IRA universally blamed for the heist on the Northern Bank’s Belfast HQ, as well as running major money laundering rackets, Mr Trimble insisted unionist voters simply would not tolerate a cabinet that included Sinn Féin.

That opposition was intensified with the “horror” of Robert McCartney’s murder by a suspected gang of Provisionals outside a Belfast pub in January, he added.

“If Mr (Gerry) Adams (Sinn Féin President) were to ask me, which he has not done, how he could rebuild Unionist support for such an Executive, I would reply that I have simply no idea how that could be done in the short term,” he revealed.

The UUP leader called for the end of the complex d’Hondt method of electing ministers, claiming it gave the IRA a veto on political progress.

He also urged British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to ditch their policy of full inclusivity in the Northern Ireland political process, arguing that republicans had done nothing to warrant that commitment.

“The subtext of their present position is that republicans matter more than anyone else. That strengthens republicans. And if republicans are enhanced electorally then disgust among unionists will be total.

“Politics will return to the ice age and community relations irreparably damaged. Government must not sleep walk into such a disaster.”

With a huge ballot-box battle against the DUP looming in the Westminster and local elections, Mr Trimble refused to yield any ground.

Going on the offensive, he accused the Democratic Unionists of failing to secure IRA disarmament, conceding to nationalist demands for representation in the Dáil, and accepting Sinn Fein demands for the terrorist killers of Garda Jerry McCabe.

“The Republican Movement came away from the December negotiation with a green card from the DUP for future criminal activity,” he claimed.

“No wonder republicans thought they could get away with the Northern Bank raid.”

The Upper Bann MP added: “We will not be driven off the battlefield, in Fermanagh and South Tyrone or here in South Belfast.

“If the DUP act in South Belfast as they did in 2001 in Fermanagh and South Tyrone and hand the seat to a nationalist they will be condemned as first and foremost simply anti-unionist.

“We can fight at local government level, but Westminster seats must not be thrown away.

“The man in the street can see that there are unionist seats that could be lost to nationalists and republicans on a split unionist vote.

“Equally there are seats republicans could be deprived of, if unionists were to act sensibly.”