Northern Ireland’s Protestant leader David Trimble launched a weeklong campaign yesterday to convince his party to share power in a government with the IRA-allied Sinn Fein.
Trimble said in Belfast it was time for his Ulster Unionists to test the sincerity of the IRA’s recent offer to disarm.
“They have said they will put their guns completely and verifiably beyond use,” he told the BBC.
“Now lets go and see if that’s true.”
Trimble’s party remains sharply divided over disarmament – the issue that prompted the collapse of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing coalition earlier this year and threatened the Good Friday peace accord.
The unionists’ ruling council is expected to vote on Trimble’s proposal next Saturday.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair praised Trimble’s comments, and Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson said it would be “madness” for the unionists to reject the proposal.
But longtime Protestant hardliner the Rev. Ian Paisley called Trimble “an arch-traitor.”
“He is actually telling the people that they should go for IRA-Sinn Fein, and trust them,” he said.
Other Ulster Unionists said the IRA’s offer on May 6 to put their guns “beyond use” was well short of actually turning over weapons.
“Unionist party policy was ‘no guns, no government’ not ‘stored guns and in government,'” William Ross said.