The DUP tonight said the British general election is a vote over keeping Unionist tradition against the damaging effect of the Belfast Agreement.
At the launch of their Westminster and local government election campaign, the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists urged people to use their votes to "pass verdict" on Mr Trimble's handling of the peace process.
Mr Paisley said voters would be faced with a choice of whether Northern Ireland "goes down the road of the republican agenda or whether they will stop and seek a way to renegotiate our position".
"This is a choice between real traditional unionism and a unionism so diluted that the leader of the party of dilution can receive the accolade from the head of the IRA: 'Well done David'," Mr Paisley said.
The North Antrim MP, whose party is fielding 14 candidates in the election and contesting 190 council seats, ridiculed Mr Trimble's letter to the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly threatening to resign as First Minister if the IRA does not move substantially on decommissioning by July 1st.
But Mr Trimble insisted today his high-risk strategy would pay. "You can endlessly discuss all the various possibilities. I am confident we are going to succeed on this just as I have been confident with the Agreement the whole way through," he said.
The UUP leader received a boost when a pro-Agreement candidate, Lady Sylvia Hermon, was selected last night to contest UK Unionist leader Mr Robert McCartney's North Down seat.
An anti-Agreement candidate, Mr Peter Weir, was chosen last year to fight the seat but was deselected after being suspended from the Ulster Unionists for siding with the DUP in several Assembly votes against Mr Trimble.
Mr Weir today called Lady Hermon, the wife of the former RUC Chief Constable Sir Jack Hermon, "a cuckoo candidate".
PA