Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey has been in talks with loyalist paramilitaries in recent months trying to persuade them to abandon violence for good, he revealed today.
As the party met for its annual conference he said discussions with both the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force had been going on since last Autumn.
As recently as January the Independent Monitoring Commission said both loyalist groups were still involved in violence.
But Sir Reg said he was trying to change that. The main unionists parties had a "special responsibility" to persuade the loyalist groups to commit to exclusively peaceful means. He said he thought the message was getting through.
Political unionism had a key responsibility , he said, because of things that happened in the 1970s. "All of use could, in my opinion, have done more to prevent the rise of loyalist paramilitaries."
He said the UUP was making no secret of what it was trying to do. "We are trying to create circumstances where there is sufficient confidence in that community to move away from the old ways."
He said wanted the terror groups to have sufficient confidence in themselves.
Sir Reg said he wanted them to be "committed to exclusively peaceful means, to focus on community activity in local areas, to recognise that one cannot go on as one has been doing - with rackets, with drugs and other activities.
"That has to stop. In October I called for an end to the organisations and I repeat that today," he said on BBC Radio Ulster's Inside Politics.