A delegation of Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) members visited Dublin today to explain their position on decommissioning, Sinn Fein’s place on the Northern Executive and the change in atmosphere after the US attacks.
The three Assembly members Mr Michael McGimpsey, Mr Dermot Nesbitt, Mr Fred Cobain and MP Lady Sylvia Hermon were in town to meet with representatives of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour.
They also held an informal press conference and explained their reasons for the upcoming Northern Assembly motion to exclude Sinn Fein from the executive, Unionist frustration over the arms issue and the future of the peace process.
Mr McGimpsey said for three and a half years Unionists had been promised if they entered government the arms issue would be resolved, but they had been let down "time and time again" over the start to decommissioning.
"Decommissioning in the morning would transform everything. But we haven’t even seen it begin. We are all waiting for Elvis," Mr McGimpsey said.
"Look at North Belfast where you have thugs from both sides escalating the tension. We have nightmares that this is the future for Northern Ireland if we don’t keep this process going."
Mr McGimpsey said he expected the motion to exclude Sinn Fein to be put before the Assembly in the middle of October. He acknowledged that it did not have the support of the SDLP and would therefore not garner the cross-community support required for it to be passed. Mr Nesbitt said, for democracy to work, parties had to prove they had no paramilitary links. He claimed all conditions of the Belfast Agreement had been satisfied except decommissioning - an issue which he said had "torn the UUP in two".
While referring to a sea-change since the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11th, the representatives said the Government had an international terrorist organisation storing weapons in Ireland.
Mr Cobain drew a comparison between terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and those in the Republic. But he said the difference the Republic was a democratic country only lacking in the will to remove the blight while Afghanistan was a tyranny.
He also asked why it was good enough to release republican prisoners in the North who had killed RUC officers but not the republican killers of Garda Jerry McCabe?
"It is a case with Irish Government of ‘what suits us you will do and what suits us we will do’. We are not being treated as equals."
Mr Cobain said this morning’s meeting with Fianna Fail had been "hopeless".
The delegation was due to meet with representatives of Fine Gael and Labour this afternoon.