Mr David Trimble will assess the mood of rank-and-file Ulster Unionists in Belfast today ahead of next Saturday's Ulster Unionist Council confrontation between unionists for and against the Belfast Agreement.
Members of the 110-member Ulster Unionist executive, which meets at the new party headquarters in east Belfast this morning, are generally in favour of the agreement and Mr Trimble will be appraising whether there is any significant slippage in that support.
While today's executive gathering is a regular bi-monthly affair Trimble loyalists and opponents say the temper of the meeting will be an important indicator in helping the Ulster unionist leader determine what strategy he should follow to carry the UUC next Saturday.
The sceptical wing of the party, which called next week's UUC meeting, is so far refusing to reveal what motion it will put before the council.
It is hoping to delay such a move for as long as possible in order to out-manoeuvre Mr Trimble. The anti-agreement wing of the party will hail as a victory Ulster Unionist MLA, Mr Duncan Shipley Dalton's decision not to seek re-election in the South Antrim constituency in the Assembly elections scheduled for May.
He said he took his decision mainly because the party has allowed anti-agreement South Antrim MP Mr David Burnside to stand in the Assembly election. "It would be utter nonsense for me to run on a joint party platform of building and protecting the Assembly alongside someone who has made it his clear and avowed intention to destroy all the political institutions," he said. Mr Trimble, however, will take some comfort in the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, resisting Sinn Féin and IRA opposition to a "ceasefire monitor". He is next week expected to formally announce the creation of this position. Another move which the Ulster Unionist leader will flag at the UUC meeting is the announcement by the North's security minister, Ms Jane Kennedy, yesterday that close circuit television cameras would be erected at the east Belfast interface.
Sinn Féin councillor, Mr Fra McCann, complained that the CCTV cameras would be an infringement of human rights and that he did not trust the police officers who would be operating the cameras. He added existing cameras had failed to stop violence.
Mr Peter Robinson, the DUP deputy leader, condemned Sinn Féin opposition to CCTV. "The fact that Sinn Féin has opposed this development can only indicate that they fear what it will show."
President Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland, Mr Richard Haass concluded a two-day series of meetings with political leaders in the North yesterday by meeting Mr Trimble and the Alliance Party.
He saw no substantial reason why there should be opposition to a violence monitor as he or she would "put sunlight on the full range of paramilitary activities".
He applauded the two IRA acts of decommissioning and its apology for Bloody Friday, but added: "At the same time there are question marks and there are problems - and not limited to the IRA but to loyalists as well.
"At the end of the day there can be no place for paramilitaries in modern society."