The unionist community is losing faith in the peace process and the UVF may be responding to that and to recent allegations concerning republicans by rearming, Mr David Ervine said yesterday.
The Progressive Unionist Party leader maintained that there was no immediate prospect of decommissioning and said that the peace process was "in crisis".
Mr Ervine told The Irish Times he had no direct evidence that the UVF was acquiring weapons, but added: "It wouldn't surprise me."
He based his reading of the situation on a range of factors. "I base it on the fact that the unionist community is in a state of dismay. I base it on the fact that there have been circumstances where many people are asking are we seeing a doublespeak, are we seeing a clear indicator of absolutely changed times, does Colombia refer to something in the dark and distant past or does it not?"
He continued: "The reality is that we've got problems. I don't want to make people interpret that the cry of crisis that I've been shouting is directly related to the UVF. It's not. It's related to many things. But I am dismayed that there is no attempt in this process to heed problems and deal with crises. Therefore, that is compounding the problem within the unionist community, which is having a knock-on effect within loyalism. The whole thing is suffering from a huge credibility problem and no one wants to do anything about it."
Mr Ervine said his beliefs about the UVF rearming were not related to the recent arrest of loyalists in Scotland or to the loyalist paramilitary group itself. They were based on the state of the community.
He said he thought the UVF was "at a crossroads" and that its next move would be influenced by various factors. These included "feelings within their own community, a sense of whether the process can work, whether someone is prepared to make it work".
According to a senior Ulster Unionist, the Belfast Agreement is likely to collapse and all the benefits which have flowed from it will be lost.
Lord Kilclooney, the former Strangford MP, Mr John Taylor, told the Cambridge Union last night that the actions of the British government were undermining unionist support for the accord.
"The Belfast Agreement was not a surrender to terror," Lord Kilclooney said. "Instead, it was a victory of democracy over terror." Claiming that the accord has created political stability in the North, he said that it had also brought increased investment, unemployment rates lower than the EU average, increased house prices and a rise in population thanks to net immigration.
"Instead of living under the siege of terrorism, Northern Ireland people had a much better quality of life," he said. But he warned: "There is now more than a 50 per cent chance that all these gains will be lost and the Belfast Agreement [will be\] brought to an end next year due to the ineptitude of the \ government."
He blamed falling unionist support for the agreement on "continued - albeit reduced - violence of the IRA" and on the government's failure to uphold the agreement's guarantee of Northern Ireland's position within the UK.
He added: "The government's decision to (1) destroy the RUC; (2) restrict the flying of the union flag; (3) remove the royal coat of arms from crown courts and (4) agree to police from the Republic patrolling our streets have undermined support for the agreement."