Mr David Trimble has sought the Taoiseach's help in reducing nationalist pressure for concessions on police reform, as unionists privately warn that a full challenge to the UUP leader is likely within a month.
At an hour-long meeting with Mr Ahern in Government Buildings yesterday, Mr Trimble warned that large sections of the unionist community had now lost confidence in the Belfast Agreement. This resulted from a much wider range of issues than the name and symbols of the reformed police force, he said.
The North's First Minister, under growing internal party pressure since the UUP lost the South Antrim by-election, asked Mr Ahern to ensure that the SDLP and Sinn Fein understood how grave he believed the situation to be, according to informed sources. He is understood to have asked for no specific change in the nationalist position on police reform, but his stance was interpreted as a warning that such a change was necessary to ensure the survival of the agreement.
While Mr Trimble told reporters he did not see the difficulties as insurmountable, unionists privately painted a bleak picture of the future for Mr Trimble and the Belfast Agreement. Party sources said anti-agreement forces had grown since the DUP South Antrim victory, and unless Mr Trimble was seen to win significant concessions the rejectionists would probably succeed in fatally undermining him within a month.
This could be done, the sources said, either through a direct leadership challenge, through a motion at the UUP annual conference calling for a pullout from the Northern Ireland Executive unless key concessions were received, or through a similar move at a special Ulster Unionist Council meeting - possibly on October 21st or 28th.
Without significant concessions to bolster Mr Trimble's position, the sources said, he was in danger of losing such a vote. This would lead to his resignation and the undermining of the entire agreement, the sources warned.
With the Police Bill to go before the House of Lords next month, Mr Trimble is facing extreme unionist pressure to ensure that some of the reforms proposed in the Patten report on police reform are blocked.
He listed a range of events which he said had caused growing unionist opposition to the agreement: unionists believed prisoners released under the agreement were major contributors to the loyalist feud; they saw the British army reducing its presence as the republican dissident threat grew; they saw the Patten proposals for a reduction of police visibility as the violence continued; and they saw no visible sign of progress on decommissioning. The review group set up by the Ulster Unionist Council warned that the proposed Patten changes to the RUC, together with the absence of IRA decommissioning, had "done massive damage to the political process".