Former Ulster Unionist MP Mr William Ross would not be drawn yesterday on speculation that he could challenge Mr David Trimble for leadership of the UUP at the Ulster Unionist Council annual general meeting in Belfast today.
Over 900 members of the council are entitled to attend today's meeting at the new Ramada Hotel in south Belfast. Trimble supporters were last night confident the First Minister would be safely re-elected despite some reports that Mr Ross could try to cause some embarrassment by standing against him.
Party analysts say the pro- and anti-Trimble factions within the UUP respectively command 60 per cent and 40 per cent support. On those figures Mr Ross would be unlikely to depose Mr Trimble if he decided this morning to stand against him but such a move could serve as a rallying cry for party sceptics.
"I will neither confirm nor deny reports that I might oppose Mr Trimble," Mr Ross told The Irish Times yesterday, while repeating his opposition to the First Minister's leadership. Without a major change in the party direction the UUP would be further damaged at next spring's Assembly elections, he warned.
"I think we will lose more ground in the Assembly elections without a change of policy and possibly without a change of leadership," said Mr Ross, who in the general election lost his East Londonderry seat to Mr Gregory Campbell of the DUP.
Eleven of the 14 UUP officer board posts are up for re-election today. At present four of the 14 officers are in the Yes camp while the remaining 10 are Trimble loyalists. It is expected that No Ulster Unionists will try to improve their position. How the battle for these minor posts unfolds today will be an indicator of the respective strengths of Yes and No Ulster Unionists.
A senior Ulster Unionist As- sembly member, Mr Jim Wilson, last night urged the party to stand firmly behind Mr Trimble. This is the 10th UUC meeting that Mr Trimble has faced since the Belfast Agreement of April 1998. Many of these were bitterly divisive but Mr Wilson said now was the time for the party to present a united front in order to prepare for the Assembly elections of May 2003.
Mr Trimble in his speech today is expected to appeal for such unity. He is also likely to be fiercely critical of a proposed amnesty for former paramilitaries on the run.
He may also have stern comments for the republican movement and again demand action on IRA decommissioning. On the positive side he will point to how politics after years of instability is slowly bedding down.
Mr Trimble's senior lieutenant, the enterprise minister Sir Reg Empey, meanwhile warned that the continuing "Yes/No unionist politics" was damaging the North's union with Britain.
"Unionism has been so busy fighting itself in recent years that we have simultaneously invigorated our opponents and demoralised our friends," he said in a statement ahead of today's gathering.
