The Ulster Unionist Party leadership's strategy on the Belfast Agreement was criticised by delegates at the annual conference of the Ulster Young Unionist Council at the weekend.
A motion by North Down Assembly member Mr Peter Weir called for the party leadership to set stricter conditions, including not just decommissioning but disbandment of the IRA, before Sinn Fein could enter into any executive. Mr Weir, who described the issue of Sinn Fein's admission as the most crucial ever faced by unionism, said there could be no fudging by suggesting a timetable for the handover of weapons, or formation of a shadow executive without it actually meeting.
"Peace is not just the absence of war - it is about the absence of the threat of war. For people to be put in government while they are still in a position of threatening war is unacceptable," he said.
Mr Weir also called for an express declaration that the IRA's war was over before Sinn Fein's entry into the executive, an end to punishment beatings, the return of the bodies of disappeared victims of violence, an end to recruitment, targeting, racketeering and related criminal activity.
Four of the six speakers following Mr Weir backed his position, with only South Antrim Assembly member Mr Duncan Shipley-Dalton and Mr Steven King , a party adviser, arguing against it. Although Mr King said decommissioning was necessary under the Belfast Agreement and should be carried out, he described the motion as inconsistent, flawed and intellectually dishonest, as it failed to take into consideration loyalist paramilitary groups and the benefits unionism had gained so far. Nevertheless, the motion was overwhelmingly carried.
Earlier, Mr William Ross MP, a prominent opponent of the Belfast Agreement during the referendum campaign, said he believed the new Assembly would not work.
Mr Ross said leading unionists had failed to recognise that as a party with an overall majority they had no reason to seek powersharing, which was where the agreement had led.