Ulster Unionists will boycott power-sharing administration in Northern Ireland that includes Sinn Fein, party leader David Trimble pledged today.
The UUP leader chief said he did not know how to restore unionist trust in power-sharing in light of the alleged IRA involvement in the Northern Bank robbery, money laundering and murder.
He also used his speech at his party's annual meeting in Belfast to savage the Democratic Unionists for failing to broker an end to IRA crime at the last round of peace talks.
Amid speculation of electoral pacts with the DUP, he insisted his party would not be swept off the political battlefield. But as Sinn Fein held its ardfheis today in the face of unprecedented pressure, Mr Trimble issued a warning over any plans to revive a Stormont administration that collapsed over alleged IRA espionage.
"We do not intend to re-enter an Executive that includes Sinn Fein.
"If republicans wish to be included in talks then it must rebuild its credibility by doing all the things it should have done and present itself as a purely peaceful democratic movement with no private army," Mr Trimble said.
He insisted unionist voters simply would not tolerate a cabinet that included Sinn Fein. That opposition was intensified with the "horror" of Robert McCartney's murder by a suspected gang of Provisionals outside a Belfast pub in January, he added.
"If Mr [Gerry] Adams were to ask me, which he has not done, how he could rebuild Unionist support for such an Executive, I would reply that I have simply no idea how that could be done in the short term," he said.
The UUP leader called for the end of the complex d'Hondt method of electing ministers, claiming it gave the IRA a veto on political progress. He also urged Prime Minister Tony Blair and the the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to ditch their policy of full inclusivity in the Northern Ireland political process, arguing that republicans had done nothing to warrant that commitment.
"The subtext of their present position is that republicans matter more than anyone else. That strengthens republicans. And if republicans are enhanced electorally then disgust among unionists will be total."
PA