The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, has maintained his verbal assault on the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, following Tuesday's vote in the Assembly. He accused the North's First Minister of being "eager to jump into bed" with Sinn Fein and Mr Gerry Adams.
After the Assembly voted in Tuesday in favour of the proposal from Mr Trimble and Deputy First Minister Mr Seamus Mallon opening the way for devolution, Dr Paisley claimed the UUP leader was betraying the Union.
He returned to that theme yesterday accusing the First Minister, after Mr Trimble's meeting with Sinn Fein at Stormont, of engaging in an "eiderdown relationship" with republicans. He also criticised Mr Roy Beggs jnr of the UUP, who voted with Mr Trimble despite indicating he would side with Dr Paisley's anti-agreement bloc.
Dr Paisley said Mr Beggs had done "the cause of Ulster a great disservice". "His lack of courage and determination will haunt him all the rest of his political life," he added. Mr Trimble and the UUP were now moving to a "grand fudge" over decommissioning, he claimed.
Dr Paisley declared: "While Sinn Fein and the Official Unionists meet to celebrate their victory and dance upon what they think is the death of traditional unionism, traditional unionism will show them that it has a light which they can never extinguish and a strength which republican murderers can never conquer.
"The people of Ulster, who have not forsaken their fathers' faith or their fathers' political principles, will live to see these strange bedfellows off the scene. Theirs will not be a pleasant dream but a nightmare with a very bad ending for them both." Mr Peter King of the anti-Belfast Agreement pressure group, Union First - of which UUP rebel Mr Peter Weir is a member - said he would have preferred if Tuesday's vote had been postponed until the IRA had passed the tests set out by the UUP, namely decommissioning. He predicted the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, would trigger the mechanism to set up the executive before the IRA had begun disarming.
Mr Seamus Close, the Alliance deputy leader, said Mr Trimble and Mr Adams would "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" if they waited for each other "to blink first" over disarmament. It was vital after the anti-agreement bloc had suffered "another humiliating defeat" in Tuesday's vote that progress was built upon. "It is now essential that unionism and republicanism recognise the need to help one another over the remaining hurdles, rather than continuing to blame one another for the existence of these hurdles." The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, welcoming Tuesday's Assembly vote, said it "sets in motion the final steps" towards the establishment of an executive, North-South bodies, the British-Irish Council and the Civic Forum.
"It also underlined the sense that, despite the difficulties that remain to be overcome, very real and tangible progress is being made and that the hope engendered by Good Friday is indeed going to be realised," added Mr Andrews.
He also welcomed the first meeting yesterday between Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party. "This is the kind of politics - the politics of dialogue and inclusion - the people voted for." The North's Political Development Minister, Mr Paul Murphy, also welcomed the vote.
