The UK Unionist Party has launched its campaign for a No vote in next month's referendum on the peace deal and claims that many Ulster Unionist voters and MPs support its position.
The party's leader, Mr Robert McCartney, yesterday said he would be fighting a "vigorous and confident campaign" against the agreement. Anti-agreement parties represented 44 per cent of the unionist electorate, he said.
"This support, we believe, will be supplemented by a very large number of voters from the UUP as demonstrated by the existing opposition of the majority of UUP MPs and a substantial number of those forming the Ulster Unionist talks team." He claimed that a "tide of opposition" to the deal was gaining momentum across the North. "As the full implications of the agreement become clear, we believe this tide of opposition will swell and increase as false hopes are exposed and subside."
Mr McCartney said his party was opposed to the agreement not because it was against a "fair and lasting peace" but because the deal would result in even worse violence and prevent any true reconciliation between people in the North.
He said that it would increase and expand the powers of the Republic in the North's internal affairs. "The transitional nature of the agreement has been recognised by Sinn Fein, who consider it only as an intermediate step towards their final objective."
Republicans would be strengthened as the agreement would allow them to retain their weapons, have their prisoners released and the RUC destroyed.