Trimble lays down gauntlet at Conservative conference

The Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble has attacked Tony Blair’s handling of the Northern Ireland peace process in a speech to the Conservative Party Conference.

Addressing the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool on Wednesday October 10, Mr Trimble said the problem was Labour’s reluctance to seize the initiative.

The Unionist Leader also said Mr Blair’s party “must be prepared to move” on the political scale in order to remove the element within Labour that is “sympathetic to Irish Nationalism”.

He said: “If the response to Bin Laden and the Taleban is clear –cut, unfortunately at home in Northern Ireland, the positions is not so clear. The problem is uncertainty and the government’s reluctance to grasp the nettle.”

Mr Trimble said: “The real challenge, however, is for New Labour and Tony Blair. Mr Blair made a good beginning on Northern Ireland. Without him there would not have been an Agreement in April 1998. But then came the implementation. Understandably he left much of that to others. To an extent he took his eye off the ball. Expediency slithered into appeasement. Confidence in the Agreement ebbed as people felt that concessions were all one way."

Concluding his speech Mr Trimble said: “There is the chance now to recover. The paramilitaries can be faced down – the Assembly stabilised. It is often said that we are the prisoners of history. But the key is on the outside. Mr Blair it is time to turn it.”

Northern Ireland’s devolved government is currently facing another crisis with the likely suspension of the power-sharing institutions over the deadlock on the weapons issue.

On Monday, following the failure of a UUP bid to exclude Sinn Féin, Mr Trimble announced that his party would boycott meetings of the executive and withdraw its ministers from the assembly next week. (AMcE)