A senior Ulster Unionist has said the party will rebuild and reform despite a wave of defections in the last three weeks.
The former environment minister, Mr Dermot Nesbitt, accused anti-Belfast Agreement elements in the party of orchestrating the defections to maximise publicity and damage the leadership of Mr David Trimble.
He said new members were joining the party; that branches which had dissolved in his own South Down constituency would reform soon; and that a new youth wing of the party would also be established.
The Ulster Young Unionist Council, which is open to members under the age of 35, disbanded itself after a meeting at party headquarters on Wednesday night.
A statement published by "Young Unionist Activists" said: "We no longer feel that the party especially under its current leadership represents a brand of unionism that we wish to be associated with." The statement accused the party of drifting "from the mainstream of unionism to the fringes of the Alliance party and now appears to be unionist in name only".
The statement followed other embarrassing defections in recent weeks. Three Assembly members, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson MP, Ms Norah Beare and Ms Arlene Foster joined the DUP.
Some 200 members of the party defected to the DUP with Mr Donaldson; 100 in his Lagan Valley constituency, 30 in Mr Trimble's Upper Bann constituency and others in East Down and South Down.
Mr Nesbitt said yesterday: "I know resignations make news, but so, too, should people coming in." He said the branch in East Down had doubled in size and "was going from strength to strength". The same would also happen in Kilkeel, Co Down - Mr Donaldson's home town - where the branch had also disbanded itself earlier.
Last night the party's MEP, Mr Jim Nicholson, said in a speech to Ulster Unionists in Mid Ulster: "The real truth is that we lost the election and are no longer in the driving seat. There is no point pretending otherwise. We must use the time to reflect and put right that which was wrong with our policy." Warning that the party might implode, he hoped that wiser counsels would prevail.
In a speech to a party branch in South Down, Mr Alex Kane, an adviser to the party's Assembly members, said the UUP had to reform or face extinction. "Waiting for the DUP to fail amounts to little more than a sticking-plaster strategy for our own short-term survival.
" It is a strategy built around a profound and entirely erroneous arrogance: the notion that former voters would come back to us just because others have failed to live up to their own promises."