Trimble threatens to pull UUP out of review

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble has threatened to pull his party out of the current Good Friday Agreement review unless the Government acts on alleged republican terrorist activity highlighted last week by the abduction of a man in Belfast.

Mr Trimble, who made his veiled threat during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons on Wednesday, wants Sinn Fein excluded from the process over an incident involving dissident republican Bobby Tohill last Friday.

He said: "The Prime Minister will know of last Friday's kidnap from a Belfast city centre bar, which but for the police would have resulted in a murder. A kidnap which was the work of mainstream republicans, which are led by the persons who have been returned here to serve as members for mid-Ulster and West Belfast.

"It is utterly unreasonable to expect us to remain in discussions with these people in these circumstances. And I have to tell the Prime Minister, that unless he can summon up the courage to act on this matter, within the next few days, then I and my colleagues will take steps next Monday to bring this process to an end."

However, Mr Trimble's stark warning to Prime Minister, Tony Blair seems to have been heeded after Mr Blair warned that if the IRA was implicated in the incident "action will follow".

He warned Sinn Féin that it could not one day expect to be taken seriously over its human rights calls when the IRA was "beating human rights out of people the next".

(MB)