Party to restate aim to topple accord

Around 350 delegates are expected to attend the DUP annual conference in Newcastle, Co Down, today where the party will rededicate…

Around 350 delegates are expected to attend the DUP annual conference in Newcastle, Co Down, today where the party will rededicate itself to toppling the Belfast Agreement.

The keynote address will be given by the Rev Ian Paisley. The party will also celebrate its 30th anniversary and commemorative medals will be distributed to members.

A motion on constitutional issues restates that the DUP is "unalterably opposed to the representatives of armed and unrepentant terrorism being placed in government" and "refuses to countenance the Belfast Agreement as the blueprint for Northern Ireland's future".

Concessions "already delivered, and still being delivered by the Ulster Unionist Party to the IRA" are "destructive of the Union and prejudicial of unionist interests", it says. The DUP is the "only practical and feasible vehicle to deliver unionism from the trap in which Mr Trimble has it ensnared".

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In the security debate, speakers are expected to condemn demilitarisation and to demand the immediate expulsion of Sinn FΘin ministers from the Executive.

One motion condemns an amnesty for IRA members on the run and another voices anger at the "destruction of the RUC whose men gave their today for our tomorrow".

The conference will also debate health, education, trade and investment, agriculture, and the environment. One motion condemns the "chronic rundown" of the North's health service and the "waste of scarce resources by the Sinn FΘin/IRA Minister Barbara Brown" whom, it says, must be sacked.

Another motion deplores the proposed removal of British symbols from the North's courtrooms as part of the reform of the criminal justice system. During the human rights debate, delegates will be asked to support controversial Orange Order marches. New human rights legislation must "enshrine the principle of freedom of assembly and the right to parade the Queen's Highway".