A number of dissident Ulster Unionist MLAs have vowed to vote against the two governments' package of proposals describing it as "unacceptable in its present form".
The Ulster Unionist Party is due to hold its meeting on what position it will adopt on the proposals next Monday night.
Yesterday, however, another two MLAs, Mr Peter Weir and Ms Pauline Armitage, said the one-sidedness of the package had to make it unacceptable to unionists as did the heavy involvement of the [Irish] Government in internal Northern Irish affairs. If Mr Weir and Ms Armitage vote against the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, he will not have enough Ulster Unionist votes to re-elect him as First Minister.
Ms Armitage said she believed the UUP leader would not recommend the package to the party. "Mr Trimble has taken chances in the past and sometimes he has misjudged situations. But this time I think he will not go ahead with this, he cannot go ahead with this. He is not a stupid man. He knows it would be the end of his leadership," she told The Irish Times.
Nothing less than the actual handover of arms would convince her to change her mind, she added.
The party's acting First Minister, Sir Reg Empey, yesterday stressed the importance of the paragraph on decommissioning in the document which he said firmly placed the onus on paramilitary organisations to deal with the issue.
"While decommissioning was only referred to in one paragraph, it was the first time that I have seen the Irish Government say that it was an indispensable part of implementing the agreement. If it is the case that all parts need to be implemented together it is perfectly obvious to everybody that this is not what has happened," he told BBC Radio Ulster.
The party's honorary secretary, Ms Arlene Foster, said the proposals had been heralded as a "give and take" for both communities when in reality they contained yet more concessions to nationalists.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the victims' group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR), Mr William Frazer, yesterday criticised the document's section on amnesty for paramilitaries on the run, claiming it had been introduced to ward off further police investigations.
"The reason why this has been put into the negotiations is because groups like ours have got their act together and formed human rights groups working on certain cases and gathering certain information which in the next few weeks we intend to hand over to police," he said.