Divisions within the Ulster Unionist Party appeared to be deepening yesterday when the party's Environment Minister, Mr Sam Foster, described the anti-Belfast Agreement faction within the UUP as "badly split".
Mr Foster said Mr Trimble's main opponents, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, the Rev Martin Smyth and Mr William Ross, took "contradictory positions" on vital issues such as devolution.
The 860 delegates of the Ulster Unionist Council (UUC), due to decide next Saturday whether the party will continue its participation in the Executive with Sinn Fein, needed "clarity and a bit of straight talking" from the agreement's opponents, he added.
"On the one hand, we have Jeffrey Donaldson saying that he backs devolution and that he is not in the business of pulling it down. Yet his supposed allies in the shape of Messrs Smyth and Ross are committed wholeheartedly to the re-imposition of direct rule.
"Between the three of them, they are doing unionism and the Ulster Unionist Party a great disservice by not telling the delegates to the UUC what precisely they are offering them," Mr Foster said.
Last night, Mr Donaldson, Mr Smyth and Mr Ross, joined by two other anti-agreement MPs, Mr William Thompson and Mr Roy Beggs, rejected Mr Foster's criticism saying they were "absolutely united".
"Unlike our Assembly colleagues, we are united behind a policy of `No Guns, No Government'. Our position is unequivocal. They, on the other hand, are deeply divided on this issue and there is growing evidence of dissatisfaction in the ranks of the Assembly party over the present political direction of the leadership," the five MPs said in a statement.
They would present to UUC delegates alternative proposals to the power-sharing arrangement which would "make it clear who is united and who is divided", the anti-Agreement MPs said.
Mr Donaldson is expected to make public the wording of a motion he will put before UUC delegates proposing the party's exit from the Executive in the coming days.
One of the smaller anti-Agreement parties, the Northern Ireland Unionist Party, has confirmed it has placed a motion calling for the exclusion of Sinn Fein before the Assembly's Business Committee. One of the party's MLAs, Mr Norman Boyd, said the motion was signed by 24 MLAs. A motion requires 30 signatures to come up for debate.
Meanwhile, The "Group of 7" which comprises the principle business, trade union and economic development bodies in Northern Ireland, has expressed "dismay" at the lack of political progress in the North.
In a statement, the group said the collapse of the political institutions for the second time would deal a "savage blow" to Northern Ireland's credibility world-wide.