The Ulster Unionist leader says he will lead his party into next year's Assembly election and has no knowledge of plans by senior party officers to have him stand down.
In an interview with The Irish Times, Mr David Trimble says his scheduled re-election as leader at tomorrow's annual meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council can be taken as "firm commitment" on his part to lead the party into the elections in May 2003 which might make or break the Belfast Agreement.
Indeed Mr Trimble appears to have virtually locked himself in position. With anti-agreement unionists now a majority at Stormont, the UUP would either have to persuade Alliance members to again redesignate themselves as unionists for the purpose of electing a successor to Mr Trimble or offer an alternative who might prove acceptable to the Democratic Unionists.
Despite the logistical difficulties presented by the UUP's reduced base, however, rumours have resurfaced that a number of senior party officers have discussed the possibility of sending "the men in suits" to tell Mr Trimble his time is up, possibly during the summer, in a re-enactment of the scenario which forced out Mr James (now Lord) Molyneaux and opened the way to the Trimble succession in 1995.
Mr Trimble insists: "I have no knowledge of this. I don't know who the men in suits would be. I have no reason to suspect any of those who have supported me over the last few years are thinking in those terms."
He asserts: "I've every reason to go forward to the Assembly election confident that we will do much better politically."
The point people miss, he says, is that last year's local government and Westminster elections saw an increase in the Ulster Unionist share of the vote from the 1998 Assembly contest.
If that pattern is maintained, he adds, "then we will significantly increase our representation in the Assembly."
Good news there, then, for Mr Tony Blair. Yet on Wednesday Mr Trimble warned the British Prime Minister that plans for an amnesty for paramilitary fugitives, or "on the runs", could be "the last straw" for many pro-agreement unionists.
Presumably he does not mean it might also represent the last straw for him as First Minister?
"I'm deliberately not elaborating on that because it is essential for the government to really focus on this," he replies. "This is not a single decision that once taken disappears off the screen."
Pointing to lasting consequences, he continues: "People will return. We can expect the republicans to engage in the same sort of triumphalism designed to destabilise the process that they have regularly engaged in throughout.
"This decision, if taken, will open a wound in the body politic . . . which would be bleeding the whole way through to the Assembly election.
"I think there's a limit to how much pain the government can inflict on the body politic without seeing it reach the point where those vital bits of support just ebb away."
Mr Trimble thinks Mr Blair may have difficulty getting legislation for an amnesty through the House of Lords and insists that resolving the issue - as Mr Blair promised at Weston Park in July last year - need not necessarily translate into "a promise to give republicans everything they want".
Critics of course might say Mr Trimble resumed ministerial office in full knowledge of the package of measures agreed by London and Dublin at Weston Park. Couldn't he have called a halt by simply saying he would not return as First Minister on that basis?
The critics, he says, would have him resign every other day on any issue they could think of - their "concealed and primary objective" being "to remove the present First Minister and bring down the Assembly" .
Interestingly - while again asserting he never accepted the Weston Park package - Mr Trimble says he never reached the point of saying he would not seek re-election on that basis because he calculated he could not at that point have carried "the bulk of unionist opinion" with him.
Then he adds: "Yes, there are issues that I will make a resignation matter, but obviously I have to be very careful about the things one treats in that light and those one does not."