JOHN HUMPHRYS:                Next Sunday the eight hundred 
and sixty members of the Ulster Unionist Party's ruling council will meet 
to decide whether to follow their leader, David Trimble, accept the deal 
on offer from the IRA and go back into a devolved government with Sinn 
Fein.  Or to throw the whole thing out and force Mr Trimble to resign. 
 Well then what?  Mr Trimble is in our Belfast studio.   I think it's Saturday 
in fact Mr Trimble of course isn't it..

DAVID TRIMBLE:                Yes it is. 

HUMPHRYS:                    And the way the council 
feels at the moment it seems unlikely that you are going to be able to 
pull it off doesn't it? 

TRIMBLE:                    No I don't think that's 
right. The reason why we've postponed was simply that it had taken so long 
to sort out some details, important matters too, with the government that 
the whole picture didn't stabilise until Wednesday of last week. So we 
felt and indeed people were telling from all levels in the party that as 
our opponents had been out spreading an awful amount of misinformation 
around that it would be better if we took more time to give people the 
chance to think things through to explain them to them. There's no reason 
why we should rush things to satisfy other people in some arbitrary deadline, 
we thought it was better that we should take our time so that we could 
have a serious dialogue and that the council will, on Saturday as you say, 
then come to a balanced and considered decision. 

HUMPHRYS:                    But the meeting was originally 
called and then postponed wasn't it. The explanation many people give is 
that it was because you simply didn't have the support. 

TRIMBLE:                    Well I've given you my 
explanation and as I took the decision I can tell you the reasons too. 


HUMPHRYS:                    Okay. Your message then 
next Saturday is going to be quite straightforward is it. You are saying 
I had my reservations, my reservations about the IRA offer and all the 
rest of it but the questions that I was asking have now been answered so 
I accept Republicans' offer.  That's going to be your message is it?

TRIMBLE:                    It's going to be slightly 
different actually to that. I am going to say to them as I have said over 
the course of the last week or so that there are some new things in this 
IRA statement and I have to say too, had the IRA said this in January it 
wouldn't have been necessary to suspend the institutions. But I do think 
it was only because  the institutions were suspended that we got this further 
advance and on this further advance the key thing is that the IRA are saying 
that they will - not could not might - but that they will completely and 
verifiably in an incredible manner put their weapons beyond use. Now, I 
still have some questions because we don't know precisely when they are 
going to do this and there are still some points that we expect General 
De Chastelaine and his commission to sort out about the methodology but 
I have to say to people that the only way that we are actually going to 
achieve the objective of bringing about a society at peace and free from 
the threat of paramilitary organisations - Republican and Loyalist - is 
to go and put this offer to the test, holding back gets nothing, whereas 
going forward and putting it to the test will produce progress.  I hope 
it will produce progress quickly and smoothly and cleanly but if it turns 
out that people let us down, well then I mean we know what to do and from 
February what pressure actually works. 

HUMPHRYS:                    The fact is of course, 
they may let you down. It is a promise of something that they will do rather 
than you being able to act on something they have already done. So therefore 
what you are saying to your members is look, trust me, trust my judgement 
of the IRA's intentions. 

TRIMBLE:                    Again I would put it in 
slightly different terms. I would say to my colleagues: trust yourselves, 
trust yourselves, you do not have to do anything other than through your 
own free choice. And you can make a judgement now, you can make a judgement 
later as to whether people are complying with the promise that they have 
given. But I have to also say, let us bear in mind what the objective of 
all of this is. And it comes back to some very basic things: It comes back 
to the agreement that we made two years ago. Do we think that that was 
important, do we think that was worthwhile, do we think that it offers 
the opportunity for a better future for everybody in Northern Ireland? 
I still think it does and I think it's still worth pursuing with. It gives 
us the opportunity of producing a society free from threat and where everybody 
can feel at ease with ourselves. I think that's still worth working for. 
I know it's not going to be easy, it hasn't been easy over the last few 
years and nobody said that it would be easy. But you have to consider what 
alternative is there. I know there are people with grave reservations about 
it, I know people who feel very hurt about aspects of the arrangements 
and how they have operated. But at the same time we have got to look at 
this carefully and coolly and  there is no practical alternative being 
offered. My critics have nothing to offer. Nothing at all, no achievement 
to point to, no hope to point to for the future either.  This gives us 
hope and we know what we have achieved and what we can achieve. So I say 
to my party and my council be confident in yourself. Be confident in yourself 
and let us put other people to the test. We've done it before, we can do 
it again and we know that we can carry this through successfully. 

HUMPHRYS:                    But you are actually 
going a little further than that, indeed quite a lot future than that aren't 
you. You are saying now the IRA campaign is finally over. 

TRIMBLE:                    What I am saying, again, 
I put it in slightly different terms. 

HUMPHRYS:                    It thought you wrote 
that this morning. 

TRIMBLE:                    I'm putting it in slightly 
different terms just to put it into perspective. I'm not saying the future 
is going to be entirely free from violence. I think the organised coherent 
campaign that the IRA operated for thirty years is not going to come back 
again. There will be problems, there may be still be violence and the violence 
may come from dissident elements, it may even come from elements within 
the IRA and indeed we still have occasional attacks and shootings coming 
from all paramilitaries and we want that to stop. What I am saying is that 
the major organised campaign has gone because, and the truth of the matter 
is, that it was beaten. Now it may not be diplomatic to say that but the 
terrorist campaign failed and it failed primarily because the security 
forces were effective and society as a whole was determined that it wouldn't 
succeed. So that campaign isn't going to come back and I think people needn't 
worry about that. But there are still problems with groups and individuals 
and there's potential problems until the weapons issues is resolved properly. 


HUMPHRYS:                    So, just to repeat my 
earlier question then. The IRA campaign as we understood it, the Provisional 
IRA campaign is over as far as you are concerned? 

TRIMBLE:                    I don't think it's going 
to come back again and I don't even think we're likely to have a Canary 
Wharf type incident again either because they discovered indeed from the 
popular reaction to the Omagh incident, which was the work of dissidents 
that there is no future in that sort of campaign at all, so they know themselves 
that terrorism isn't going to work and indeed it will destroy their political 
objectives, their political project, so I think we don't have to fear that. 
 But that doesn't mean that we have no problems.  We have problems through 
the racketeering that goes on, from the criminality that's associated with 
it and from paramilitary bosses wishing to exercise power in particular 
neighbourhoods, so we still have problems to tackle there and that's why 
it's important that we keep the focus not just on weapons but on the need 
for paramilitarism as a whole to end and for us then to get on to try and 
clean up the racketeering.  There's a big clean up job that's going to 
have to be done in this society and the only way it's going to be done 
is through us moving forward with the Assembly, having security functions, 
having police and criminal justice functions devolved to it and doing the 
job ourselves.  If we wait for the Northern Ireland Office to clear up 
society in Northern Ireland it will never happen.  The only people that 
can do it are the people of Northern Ireland, their elected representatives 
working together.

HUMPHRYS:                    Yeah, but your problem 
next Saturday is going to be that many of your members believe that the 
focus should be kept on weapons and they believe that promises from the 
IRA are all very well but they will not believe the campaign is over until 
they see weapons being destroyed, actually destroyed, being got rid of.

TRIMBLE:                    Well what I'm saying to 
them is that what we're proposing to do will achieve that but that what 
they're proposing to do will not.  I mean my critics have no plans or no 
proposals and no ideas as to how in practice decommissioning can be achieved 
and paramilitarism actually ended.  They have no proposals, they have no 
idea, they have no way to point out how it can be done.  What I'm saying 
is that this path that we're following will do it but I'm not saying that 
it's going to do it easily and quickly, it will probably require continual 
effort on our part but then by virtue of our efforts so far we have moved 
the IRA to the point where they are promising to do it - now that's a long 
way from where they were a year ago when they were saying there would be 
no decommissioning by the front door, the back door, and not a bullet, 
not an ounce and all the rest of it.  They've moved on a long way from 
that, those statements are no longer being made.  Now they're saying that 
they will put weapons beyond use completely, verifiably and in a credible 
manner.

HUMPHRYS:                    There is another reason 
why your council may not agree to letting you go back into the Executive 
and that is the RUC.  They have passed unanimously a resolution saying 
that the name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary must be retained and you 
don't have that undertaking to give them.

TRIMBLE:                    What the Council wants 
and what the Council said at its last meeting was that it wants to see 
that the proud name of the RUC does not disappear.  I don't think it will. 
 I think that we will see that as we move into new arrangements that the 
honoured name of the RUC will be kept in perpetuity, it may not be used 
on a day to day basis......

HUMPHRYS:                    No.  It won't be a working 
title will it....?

TRIMBLE:                    That may be a working 
title but that doesn't mean that the name will disappear - it will not, 
of that I'm quite confident but we'll put all the matter before that.  
You see what Council was after, what the ordinary Unionists felt about 
this, and it's quite a simple matter but quite an important matter.  Republicans 
have been going around and other people who are sympathetic towards them 
or try to understand them kept saying to us that with regard to these arrangements 
for decommissioning and all the rest of it, we mustn't humiliate the paramilitaries, 
we must allow things to appear that they haven't been defeated and then 
at the same time, nationalists are turning round and saying, 'we must inflict 
a defeat upon the police force', because that is what the business about 
stripping them of their proud title of the Royal title of the crown and 
of the flag - that's what it means.  It's a symbolic defeat which for some 
reason, for some pique within Nationalism they wish to inflict upon the 
police force and of course people feel that, they feel that they've been... 
they're going to be humiliated and what they're insisting with regard to 
this resolution is 'we will not be humiliated'.

HUMPHRYS:                    Indeed, and your own.....

TRIMBLE:                    That is not going to...... 
I must now...... I'm now satisfied that the government has learned the 
lesson of the folly that was in Patten and that it is now very anxious 
to ensure that the police and their families do not feel humiliated and 
they're going to reflect that in the future arrangements with regard to 
the name and with regard to the badge.

HUMPHRYS:                    Your own deputy..........

TRIMBLE:                    ....and I think that when 
the Council see that they will see that as a meeting the need that they 
had.

HUMPHRYS:                    Just a very quick final 
thought and that is if you don't succeed, one of your strongest supporters 
has warned, that there will be a joint administration between London and 
Dublin - that will be the result of it.  I'm sorry we've only got twenty 
seconds.  Can you deal with that?  Is that likely in your view?

TRIMBLE:                    I don't like proceeding 
by some form of blackmail and furthermore I don't actually think that that's 
going to happen in any formal sense but we do know that there is a close 
working relationship and people had better bear in mind who are going to 
take the decisions if we don't take them?

HUMPHRYS:                    David Trimble, thank 
you very much indeed.