The leader of the Ulster Unionist Party has said discussions with anti-agreement elements of his party seem to have been "sunk" following their proposals for a deadline for IRA decommissioning.
Speaking after meeting the British Prime Minister, Mr Trimble said he was disappointed that anti-agreement members of his party, led by Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, had chosen to produce the proposals instead of reaching a compromise with those on the pro-agreement side of the party.
During discussions between the two factions "there were some ideas being tossed around which I thought were really good ideas". Mr Trimble said he was "open-minded" on negotiations "but it looks to me as though the proposals that were sent round have sunk the discussions that were ongoing".
He dismissed the demands for an arms deadline as "Jeffrey's letter to Santa" and said a deadline was "a crude device, and counter-productive".
Mr Trimble said that to give republicans a deadline for decommissioning would allow them to "hunker down and withstand the pressure for five weeks and then `Bingo' they will have escaped because the unionists will have run away and they can blame the unionists for both setting the deadline and then walking away".
Mr Trimble said while the second IRA arms inspection was welcome, it fell short of progress which should have been made by republicans on decommissioning.
Nationalists and republicans have called on moderate Ulster Unionists not to take any decisions which would damage the peace process.
Speaking before meeting the British Prime Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, Deputy First Minister, said he had faith in the common sense of the Ulster Unionist Party and called on dissident unionists to "wise up" and realise they had a responsibility to the people of Northern Ireland.
He said he had "enough knowledge and respect for people within the Ulster Unionist Council to know they will make a decision based on the future and not hankering after a past that's simply not going to come back". Speaking after his meeting with the Prime Minister, the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, said he told Mr Blair the British government had "lost the plot" on police reform, on the flags issue and on criminal justice.
"We sought in a persuasive way and in the context of the Good Friday agreement to put it to him that he needed to do more to make all of this work," he said.
Mr Adams added: "While I'm dogmatically opposed to unionism I've come to the view that this is about staking our claim to the future and there's a good future for all of us, including unionists, if this process works."
Those Ulster Unionists who wanted to set deadlines for decommissioning knew that this would crash the process and indeed wanted this to happen.