A senior adviser to Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble has defended his role with the Loyalist Commission.
Mr David McNarry is a member of the commission which provides a political focus for loyalist paramilitaries and includes unionist political figures, Protestant clergymen and paramilitary representatives.
The UDA, which admitted murdering the Shankill loyalist Alan McCullough (21) last week, is on the commission.
Speaking to the BBC's Politics Show yesterday, Mr McNarry said he was involved to try to stop loyalist violence.
"The commission itself does not give legitimacy to paramilitaries," he said.
"The function of the commission is to work our way through how paramililtarism ends.
"My view on it is and I share this with the clergymen who are on it that the best way to engage is to actually sit with with paramilitaries," he said.
Two men arrested and questioned following Mr McCullough's murder have been released and another man has been arrested.
The controversy follows a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Party executive on Friday called to try and defuse tensions within the party over reports that the home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment were to be stood down to "normalise" the British army presence.
The issue is to be discussed by the party's ruling organisation, the 900-strong Ulster Unionist Council at a meeting next week.