Trimble labels DUP as 'silent' negotiators

As the Ulster Unionist Party's candidates gathered in Belfast to lodge their nomination papers for the Assembly elections in November, the UUP party leader fired a broadside at their main electoral competitors, the Democratic Unionist Party.

UUP leader David Trimble said the DUP were engaged in silent "semaphore signals" with Sinn Féin.

Mr Trimble also said it was a "fairytale" that the DUP were going to renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement.

Refering to a DUP campaign film depicting UUP headquarters as the "House of Horrors" Mr Trimble said: "I think rather that we would like to run that feature under the title 'The Silent Negotiator' because we have people who say they are going to negotiate but are not going to talk."

Mr Trimble said that the signals from the DUP in recent months indicated that "statements that they won't talk directly to Sinn Fein are simply not true".

He said: "I would suggest that one simply should not believe what the DUP say on this. What you should say to them is: 'Why won't they tell us what they are going to negotiate and what compromises are they going to make?'''

Mr Trimble comments came yesterday as he joined the party's Belfast candidates to lodge their nomination papers for the November 26 Assembly elections.

The UUP leader confidently predicted that his colleagues would not only hold their seats at Stormont but also make other breakthroughs.

"I am quite confident in this election that for Ulster Unionists there is nothing on the downside," he said. "We will hold all our existing seats but there are things on the upside. There is the prospect of improving the vote and possibly of gains and maybe more than one gain if we get the right support from the electorate.''

(SP)