JOHN HUMPHRYS:                But first Northern Ireland. 
David Trimble was in a defiant mood yesterday when he talked to the annual 
conference of his Ulster Unionist Party. He has no intention either of 
resigning as party leader or of walking away from the Good Friday Agreement 
which, once again, is in so much trouble. But can he really hold on and 
the can the agreement survive? Jeffrey Donaldson is perhaps the biggest 
thorn in his side - certainly on of them - an MP who thinks the agreement 
is fatally flawed. He wants to return to the party's policy of "no guns... 
no government" and he does NOT want the Royal Ulster Constabulary to be 
changed in the way the British government intends. Mr Donaldson is in our 
Belfast studio.
                        Good afternoon Mr Donaldson. 


JEFFREY DONALDSON:            Good afternoon John. 

HUMPHRYS:                    Mr Trimble made a very 
powerful appeal yesterday for support for the peace process as it now stands, 
did he win you over? 

DONALDSON:                Well a lot of things have happened 
this week John. Earlier in the week we had David Trimble's confession in 
The Daily Telegraph newspaper that the agreement itself was riddled with 
constructive ambiguity and that if he knew now..if he had known then what 
he knows now about the agreement it wouldn't have signed up to it. So clearly 
I think there is now a consensus within the party that the agreement is 
deeply flawed and what I'm suggesting is that we need to address those 
flaws, because if we continue on the path we've embarked, this process 
is going to fail and we don't want to see that happening in terms of the 
decommissioning of terrorist weapons. I think we've got to address that 
issue, we've got to address the problems in relation to the policing debate 
and these things have got to be looked at and that's why I and others are 
proposing in the aftermath of the South Antrim by-election and something 
that was an electoral disaster for the party, that we need to address these 
issues and do so quickly. 

HUMPHRYS:                    Well you may well be 
right about there being flaws in the agreement, I suspect most people would 
probably agree with you but the fact is, as Mr Trimble makes very clear 
indeed, there is nowhere else to go. You don't have a plan B so if the 
agreement falls and you walk out of the assembly for instance, then that 
is the end of that isn't it, you are back ultimately to direct rule in 
Ulster, the end of devolved government in Northern Ireland. 

DONALDSON:                The process will fail John unless 
we address these issues.  It's failing at the moment, is anyone seriously 
suggesting that we've made progress on the decommissioning of terrorist 
weapons because we haven't...

HUMPHRYS:                    You have a government 
in Northern Ireland that seems to be working...

DONALDSON:                We have got a debate on the 
policing issue which threatens to up end the whole process, the IRA and 
Sinn Fein are threatening to walk away if they don't get their way on the 
policing debate, well, you know, these are matters that need to be addressed 
and done so properly.  There's been a tendency in the past to brush them 
to one side, not to meet them head on and I think they have to be met head 
on. They've got to be addressed. I'm not talking about pulling the whole 
edifice down, what I am saying is that the foundations are so fundamentally 
weak that it's going to fall down unless we sort out the foundations that 
are deeply flawed. 

HUMPHRYS:                    You say it's failing 
at the moment but look at what you actually have now that you didn't have 
before it all began. You do have an IRA ceasefire imperfect admittedly, 
but you have it, you do have devolved government, you do have an assembly 
that is working, you are sitting alongside Sinn Fein, something that would 
have been unthinkable at government level in Northern Ireland until very 
recently.  If you now abandon the process, you say you don't want to bring 
it all down but if you do move away from the Northern Ireland agreement, 
then you are back where you started aren't you. 

DONALDSON:                Well John I think you've given 
a very one-sided view of the agreement. We also have all of the terrorist 
prisoners released, we also have an amnesty granted by the government to 
terrorist prisoners on the run.  We also have the dismantling of the Royal 
Ulster Constabulary, we also have violence on our streets. We also have 
an increase of criminality on our streets, the terrorist organisations 
have increased their activity not reduced it at that level. We also have 
the IRA running guns from America, so you know we have got a lot of things 
there and you can paint a rosy picture but I think that masts the reality 
that underneath that there are very deep problems that haven't been addressed 
and that's what people want. That's what the people of South Antrim want, 
that's why they sent a protest, a very clear protest message that this 
process, at least in terms of a Unionists perspective is one-sided, it 
is about appeasing a very violent minority and the Unionist Community does 
not see that it has gained significant benefits from this agreement, it 
sees that it is unbalanced and that the benefits have been for the IRA 
more than anyone else. 

HUMPHRYS:                    The danger though, if 
you go down the path that you seem to be suggesting, is that Unionism is 
sidelined and that you will see London and Dublin sorting things out for 
themselves, you will be sitting there watching it happen. 

DONALDSON:                Well I heard what Peter Mandelson 
said earlier this week and I wasn't impressed by his scaremongering, hints 
of joint authority. If Peter Mandelson really believes that some form of 
joint authority over Northern Ireland is going to bring peace and stability, 
then I think he is fooling no-one only himself.  What we've got to do is 
recognise that there are flaws in this process that need to be addressed 
and unless they are addressed, the process will collapse John, or else 
when we come to the next election, what happened in South Antrim will be 
repeated right across Northern Ireland and where will the Unionist Party 
be then and what value will the Unionist Party be to this process if it's 
left electorally decimated.

HUMPHRYS:                    But let's look at what 
you probably regard as the greatest flaws and that is the fact that the 
IRA hasn't given up any guns or Semtex or anthing else, no decommissioning 
at all.  You had said that another inspection of the IRA's arms dumps will 
not do you, that won't not satisfy you.  Mr Trimble says there is no chance 
that you are going to get real decommissioning, actual handing over of 
weapons unless you stay in the Good Friday Agreement. 

DONALDSON:                Well we haven't had any real 
decommissioning after two and a half years of the Good Friday Agreement. 
Decommissioning under the Agreement was supposed to have been completed 
in May this year, after two years, well we're now two and a half years 
on and no decommissioning. What I am saying is clearly this method hasn't 
worked, so far, within the agreement and given that that is undermining 
confidence in the agreement, particularly in the Unionist community, then 
we need to do something about that,     that's all that I am saying. 
We've got to address the failure of the paramilitaries to honour their 
obligations under the agreement. They can't have it both ways, John, there 
reaches a point in this process, and I think it's now, where we have to 
say to the paramilitaries, look, you've had the benefits, you've taken 
the concessions and you've pocketed them, but you haven't delivered the 
peace that the people of Northern Ireland want and were promised, were 
promised under this agreement. Now, you've got to honour your obligations, 
you must make a choice, there is a path before you that is the democratic 
path and if you choose that path there is a place there for you, but if 
you choose to continue with your violence and your violent activities and 
your gun running and your criminality, then you cannot walk the democratic 
path exclusively, you can't have it both ways. They must make a choice 
and they've got to be faced up to that choice. 

HUMPHRYS:                    So when you say faced 
up to it, can I be clear about something, as far as decommissioning is 
concerned. Are you saying that there ought to be a deadline, set for the 
start of that decommissioning process, the start of actual decommissioning, 
that you will put that proposal before your ruling body, the council, the 
Ulster Unionist council and that if there is no beginning of decommissioning 
 by the time that that deadline expires, then you should walk out of the 
executive.  Is that what you are saying, can I be clear about that, if 
so when is the deadline going to be?
                        
DONALDSON:                Well we had a deadline and it 
was in May this year and it passed and there was no decommissioning.  I'm 
not convinced John that deadlines in that sense will work.  What I think 
is needed is that in this process, Unionists made it clear, that we cannot 
sustain a position where we're sitting in government with Sinn Fein, IRA, 
bearing in mind that Martin McGuinness, who Ken Macguinness, my colleague, 
described as the 'Godfather of Godfathers'  is now the minister of education 
in the government of Northern Ireland.  Now we can't sustain that position 
in the absence of decommissioning by the IRA.  They're not disarming - 
they're re-arming.  They're engaged in violent activities.  They're engaged 
in murder on the streets.

HUMPHRYS:                    So if not a deadline 
- what?

DONALDSON:                Well I'm not going to announce 
our proposals on this programme in advance of the Ulster Unionist Council 
meeting.  I will give the delegates at the Ulster Unionist Council the 
opportunity to consider the proposals that we will put forward to them. 
 It will be, I believe, a viable alternative to the way in which this process 
is proceeding at the moment and I believe that it is a way in which we 
can address the flaws in the Agreement and we can address how we can move 
forward.  I want to see a positive move forward.  I'm not in the business 
of seeing us return to the past.  I want to see progress but it's got to 
be progress based on firm foundations where there is a clear understanding 
and expectation that the paramilitaries will actually deliver on their 
side of the bargain.

HUMPHRYS:                    But those proposals are 
not going to be acceptable to your leader David Trimble are they?

DONALDSON:                Well we don't know that.  What 
I would like to see is a consensus within the party on how we go forward. 
 At the moment that consensus doesn't exist.  If I were the leader of a 
party that was split down the middle and was in the electoral mess that 
the Unionist Party is in at the minute, I'd want to see what I could do 
about rebuilding the consensus instead of simply pushing ahead with a policy 
that doesn't achieve a consensus, that is out of favour with the electorate 
and is failing.  I would want to see if there were ways in which I could 
restructure that policy and that's what we're suggesting and I hope actually 
that we can persuade David Trimble that there is value in the proposals 
that we will put forward.

HUMPHRYS:                    We know that David Trimble's 
not up for any sort of restructuring the sort of thing you've described. 
 He's made that clear time and time again.  The SDLP is not up for that 
sort of restructuring.  Sinn Fein is not up for that sort of restructuring.

DONALDSON:                Well we don't know that John. 
 We don't know that for certain after all we've had previous reviews of 
the Agreement and the party's participated in those reviews and at the 
end of the day we as a party have got to consider our approach to this 
agreement.  The SDLP have sat on the fence throughout all of this process. 
 They've taken no risks.  I think we're entitled to know from the SDLP 
what they're prepared to do to put pressure on the paramilitaries.  I think 
we need to know from the governments what they're prepared to do as well. 
 The responsibility shouldn't rest solely with the Ulster Unionist Party, 
that's absolutely right.  There's a responsibility on others to do their 
bit to address the flaws that are there and that are failing the people 
of Northern Ireland.

HUMPHRYS:                    Well I can tell you one 
thing as you well know that the SDLP is not prepared to do and that's countenance 
any watering down the Pattern proposals for the reform of the RUC, I mean 
that's just the beginning of it.

DONALDSON:                Well then we're going to end 
up with proposals that do not command widespread community support and 
actually if you read the Belfast Agreement, that's what is stated:  That 
there would have to be proposals for policing that could command widespread 
community support and it is clear that the Unionist Community does not 
support the proposals in the Pattern Report, so we don't have that consensus 
and what we're going to do is simply replace one set of grievances with 
another set of grievances and the result will be that we don't have what 
we desire and that is a proper police system for Northern Ireland and I 
think actually the Royal Ulster Constabulary,  given its professional reputation 
throughout the world can form the basis of a police service in Northern 
Ireland and that's why I'm against many of the proposals that have been 
put forward.  I think they're unnecessary and they're simply about pandering 
to the whim of the Republican Movement.

HUMPHRYS:                    Given that David Trimble 
does not support you in the things you've been saying today, quite apart 
from the RUC where you may have a degree of agreement, but given that on 
the broad front he is not going to say - 'yeah, I'll go along with Jeffrey 
Donaldson on all of that', do you believe that he ought to be challenged 
for the leadership and if there were a contest would you feel, yourself, 
obliged to stand?

DONALDSON:                Well I'm not sure that I accept 
your premise for that question John.  After all, David Trimble said yesterday 
in his speech to the party conference that he wasn't prepared to wait another 
three months for decommissioning - now what does that imply?  Does that 
mean that he too, as he said in May this year when he went to the Ulster 
Unionist Council, that he would be prepared to walk away from the executive 
if decommissioning didn't occur.  So don't conclude that there isn't a 
possibility that the party will achieve a consensus on walking away (both 
speaking at once).

HUMPHRYS:                    But he has accused you 
of undermining the party.  I mean that's a pretty powerful accusation to 
make.  It doesn't sound like consensus to me.

DONALDSON:                Well it is a pretty powerful 
accusation.  I don't think I've undermined the party.  When I was up in 
South Antrim talking to people on the doorsteps it wasn't me they were 
putting the blame on, it wasn't me they were saying got it wrong with regard 
to the Agreement, wasn't me who they were saying made the mistakes on decommissioning, 
on policing, on prisoner releases - it wasn't me they were pinning the 
blame on.

HUMPHRYS:                    So would you challenge 
him, and if not you - who?  Will you challenge him?

DONALDSON:                I don't think this is about 
personalities. And actually I think it demeans the debate, the seriousness 
of the debate that has to take place within unionism, by reducing it to 
the level of personality.  What I think is important is that we address 
the flaws that are there in the agreement, that we address our approach 
to the agreement, our policy with regard to key issues like decommissioning, 
that's what's important at this time, not personality....

HUMPHRYS:                    But if Mr Trimble continues 
to resist the sort of changes that you want made will there be a challenge?

DONALDSON:                I don't think that that's in 
the offing.  I think that what needs to happen is that the Ulster Unionist 
council meets and considers its policy and takes decisions on these key 
issues.  There won't be a debate at the next meeting of Ulster Unionist 
council about who should be the leader and I think that's absolutely right. 
 These issues are far too important for that.

HUMPHRYS:                    Jeffrey Donaldson, many 
thanks.

DONALDSON:                Thank you.