Ulster Unionist Assembly members are meeting privately today to discuss strategies for the political tests ahead. One UUP MLA has called for greater co-operation between Ulster Unionists and the DUP.
After a meeting of the party's executive yesterday, most of the UUP's 24 Assembly members travelled to a confidential location in Northern Ireland to examine how the party can meet the difficult challenges from the DUP now that the Rev Ian Paisley's party has taken the place of the UUP as the biggest unionist party.
At this so-called "away day" the leader, Mr David Trimble, who is under some internal pressure to resign, is attempting to revive party confidence and energy after the defections to the DUP of three MLAs, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, Ms Arlene Foster and Ms Norah Beare. This leaves the DUP with 33 Assembly seats, against 24 for the UUP.
While there was some rumbling there were no direct calls on Mr Trimble to resign during the meeting of the party's 110-member executive yesterday, according to party sources.
Earlier yesterday, however, the South Antrim MP, Mr David Burnside, who with the Rev Martin Smyth has retaken the party whip, said that the UUP was now in a "sorry state" and must change policy.
"We have to get a strategy where we no longer lose unionists like Jeffrey Donaldson and Arlene Foster. We also have to get away from the sad state of affairs where there are some in the party who are of the opinion that those with different views have no place in the UUP."
He would not say whether a challenger to Mr Trimble would emerge at the annual meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council in March, but insisted policy changes were vital.
"The leadership needs to realise that the policy it has pursued in recent years has failed. We should never have gone three times into government with Sinn Féin and should not have compromised on the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
"The Belfast Agreement has been rejected by the electorate, and it has to be radically changed or renegotiated. I very much regret that the Ulster Unionist Party and the DUP have not come together and worked on a strategy to achieve that aim," said Mr Burnside.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin, despite its opposition to the body, met the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) in Belfast yesterday. However, Ms Bairbre de Brún, who with fellow MLAs Mr Conor Murphy and Mr Alex Maskey was at the meeting, said the party made clear to the IMC its belief that it was designed to act against Sinn Féin.
Ms de Brún said the remit of the IMC, which is mainly checking whether the IRA and other paramilitaries are fully observing their ceasefires, was outside the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
"The IMC reports will be based upon information supplied by securocrats, and it is our firm belief that they are a smokescreen to validate arbitrary acts of exclusion by the British Secretary of State," she said.
