- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 June 2001 11.11 BST
In an interview with The Observer , Trimble repeated his determination to continue as Ulster Unionist Party leader: 'There is no one else to pass the baton on to, so I have to keep running with it.'
But he faced an immediate challenge from his main rival in the party, the Lagan Valley MP Jeffrey Donaldson, who is demanding a place on the UUP team for the forthcoming talks on IRA arms decommissioning.
Donaldson said seats for himself and David Burnside, the newly-elected MP for South Antrim, were 'the absolute bottom line'.
The pair's presence in the UUP delegation would represent a hardening of the party's position on the issue.
Interviewed at his home, the First Minister accused the Democratic Unionist Party of associating with loyalist extremists who attacked him, his wife Daphne and party workers during the count for his Upper Bann seat on Friday night.
'I find it nauseating to hear the DUP talking about not going into government with IRA terrorists when there were loyalist terrorists hanging around their entourage throughout the campaign and during the count,' Trimble said.
'The DUP are totally hypocritical when it comes to loyalist terrorists, many of whom were responsible for harassing and beating up my party workers during the campaign.'
Trimble again warned he will resign as First Minister on 1 July if there has been no progress by the IRA to decommission its arms.
His comments came as Donaldson refused to be drawn on any potential move against Trimble's leadership at the next Ulster Unionist Council meeting on 23 June.
But Nigel Dodds, the newly-elected DUP MP for North Belfast, challenged Trimble to resign. 'If he had any honour at all he would have done a William Hague by now,' Dodds said.
The Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, who increased his majority in West Belfast seat to more than 20,000, said decommissioning would come about only if the IRA was persuaded that there was an alternative and unionists were serious about peace.
Adams said he did not mind whether the UUP mounted a legal challenge over Sinn Fein's disputed victory in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. The UUP alleges electoral malpractice in the seat, which Michelle Gildernew won by 53 votes.
The province's main loser in the election, the SDLP, has been urged to start looking after its own interests rather than those of rival political parties.
Mark Durkan, the North's Finance Minister and SDLP Assembly Member for Foyle, said his party had paid more attention to the problems of other parties, particularly Sinn Fein and the UUP, to its own detriment.
'Given the polarisation of the community in this election, this society needs the SDLP more than ever,' Durkan said.
Dr John Reid, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said talks would take place between all political parties within days to try to find a way forward in the deadlocked peace process.
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