Mr David Trimble, in the face of mounting Ulster Unionist Party dissatisfaction with the Patten report on policing, is to meet the party's ruling executive on Monday to plan its strategic response to the proposals.
Publication of the Patten document put further pressure on the UUP leader, with his deputy, Mr John Taylor, pulling out of the Mitchell Review and West Tyrone MP Mr William Thompson saying Mr Trimble should consider resignation.
The UUP MP for Lagan Valley, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, said that if the proposed policing board and district police boards included Sinn Fein members, then unionists should boycott these bodies. The dissident internal UUP pressure group, Union First, said the Patten report should be "binned".
Mr Albert Colmer, the UUP vice-chairman of Down Council, called on Mr Trimble to resign his post as the North's First Minister - although he did not say he should resign his party leadership.
Anti-agreement unionists such as the DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, Mr Robert McCartney of the UK Unionist Party, and Mr Cedric Wilson of the Northern Ireland Unionist Party, are planning a campaign to oppose the Patten recommendations and the agreement.
Supporters of the RUC, led by Dr Paisley placed crosses outside Stormont yesterday, in memory of the 302 RUC officers killed during the Troubles.
While the proposed dropping of the RUC name and emblem, and claims that the report could create the conditions for former IRA members to be involved in policing, have infuriated unionists, the republican response has been much more muted.
There was even a hint from Sinn Fein leader Mr Gerry Adams yesterday that he might yet encourage young republicans to join the proposed force. "If we do come to a conclusion that the Patten report does contain the ingredients of a new policing service and that the RUC will have gone, of course Sinn Fein will come out in a very positive way. But it is early days yet and it is too soon to be making those type of judgments now," he said in Belfast yesterday.
Mr Taylor said because of recent IRA activity, he would not be joining his colleagues in the review which resumes on Monday under former US senator Mr George Mitchell. "Whilst IRA-Sinn Fein refuse to reject terrorism, I am not prepared to talk to them. I cannot participate in the Mitchell review whilst the objective is to have Sinn Fein in government in present circumstances," added the Strangford MP.
Mr Thompson welcomed what he described as Mr Taylor's "conversion". He said unionists who had signed up to the Belfast Agreement without realising that the Patten Commission that flowed from it would be disastrous for the RUC were naive. And he said Mr Trimble should "consider his position". Apart from Mr Taylor's defection from the UUP negotiating team, much of the strong internal criticism has been coming from predictable anti-agreement quarters such as Mr Thompson and Union First. Other senior unionists defended Mr Trimble.
