Dissident Ulster Unionists have warned their party leader, Mr David Trimble, not to accept the IRA statement without further guarantees if he does not want to risk his political future.
The anti-agreement Ulster Unionist MP for West Tyrone, Mr William Thompson, said Mr Trimble would not be able to sell the deal to the 860 Ulster Unionist Council delegates meeting on May 20th and could be facing resignation.
"The IRA have offered to secure a number of arms dumps, but there is nothing to suggest that means all of them. They can still control and supervise dumps. David Trimble claimed he must have certainty that actu al decommissioning would happen before he went back into government. There is no certain ty here," Mr Thompson insisted.
While the UUP leader had talked about the need for clarification there was no doubt that he had already accepted the deal, he added. "His problem will be selling it to the council. I have no doubt certain unionists are dying to get back into this Executive, but David Trimble would be a fool to jump at this . . . If he goes for a vote and loses, then he'll have to resign, he's finished."
The UUP MLA for North Down, Mr Peter Weir, said rather than using the structures already in place for the destruction of paramilitary weapons, the IRA statement amounted to yet another fudge on decommissioning.
"There are already legislative schemes providing for the handover and subsequent destruction of weapons, and also for the paramilitaries destroying the weapons themselves in a supervised fashion . . . We have got to cut through the hype and see that whatever the statement means, it doesn't mean decommissioning, and those who are proponents of these proposals should have the honesty to admit it," he added.
The Ulster Young Unionist Council said the IRA statement was insufficient to merit the reconvening of the UUC.
"The special meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council should not be convened until all the requirements in the UUP's Assembly election manifesto, which include IRA/Sinn Fein beginning an ongoing process of substantive and verifiable decommissioning, have been fulfilled," it said.