Sir Reg Empey (51) is a close colleague of David Trimble since the early 1970s and has stuck by him through his most difficult travails of recent years.

Before and after the Belfast Agreement when half of the UUP Westminster MPs were deserting their leader and other more self-serving members were playing cute, he remained solid.

He became Sir Reg Empey after being honoured in the British New Year Honours List. He has an economics degree from Queen's University and has twice served as Belfast Lord Mayor and chaired the City Council's economic development committee.

He has a background in retailing - Newells store where he worked in the mid-1970s on Royal Avenue, Belfast, was twice badly damaged in IRA bombs.

Mark Durkan (38), is eager for a new political challenge. In 1995, it was speculated that Mr John Hume would step down from his position as MP at Westminster in favour of Mr Durkan.

He got his break into party politics in 1984, as the SDLP leader's Westminster personal assistant, after being approached when he was deputy president of the Union of Students in Ireland from 1982-84.

It was at Queen's University, Belfast, that Mr Durkan got his first taste of political life as a graduate in politics, and then as deputy president of Queen's student union from 1981-82.

He has been the party's chairman from 1990-95, and an SDLP councillor in Derry City Council since 1983.

Widely regarded as the DUP's hard man, Peter Robinson (49) is described as cold, calculating and ruthless but with a razor sharp intellect, a forensic eye for detail and unrivalled organisational abilities.

The son of a chef and a sewing mistress, Mr Robinson grew up in working-class east Belfast. Strongly opposed to the Civil Rights Movement, he was attracted to the Rev Ian Paisley, became a founder member of the DUP 26 years ago and is now deputy leader. An MP for 20 years, with a power base around the shipyard in east Belfast, he is almost certain to succeed Dr Paisley as leader.

A born-again Christian he and Iris, also an Assembly member, have three grown up-children. He doesn't smoke or drink.

Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness (49), has been a pivotal advocate of the creation of an alternative to the republican armed struggle.

He became involved in the civil rights movement in Derry after October 1968 and joined the republican movement in 1970, becoming its leader in the city and running Free Derry until the British army broke through the barricades in 1972.

Mr McGuinness was arrested in 1972 and 1974 in the Republic and served two terms in prison for IRA membership.

Currently a member of Parliament for the Mid-Ulster constituency, he has refused to take up his seat at Westminster in accordance with the party's policy of abstention. It also refuses to take the oath of allegiance to the Queen.

Previously regarded as a hardliner, Mr Foster is a longstanding member and former chairman of Fermanagh District Council with a reputation for having strong opinions on security. However, under Trimble's leadership he has been a moderating influence in Fermanagh-South Tyrone where he is probably the most prominent Ulster Unionist after local MP Mr Ken Maginnis.

A retired social worker, Mr Foster featured on TV footage of the aftermath of the Enniskillen bomb pulling a badly injured neighbour from the rubble.

Sean Farren (59) is a former chairman of the SDLP and has been active in the party since 1973 when he joined in Portstewart, Co Derry. Born in Dublin and an economics graduate of UCD, he went to the North in the early 1970s after accepting a teaching post at the University of Ulster.

Politics was in his blood, he says, with his grandfather having been a Labour councillor in Dublin. Mr Farren rose rapidly through the SDLP ranks and has served as party chairman from 1980-84 and was elected to the Assembly for North Antrim in 1982. He also formed part of the SDLP delegation at the Brooke multi-party talks in 1992, and again in the recent multi-party talks.

Nigel Dodds (40), a former assistant to his party leader in Brussels, was once described as "the man who carries the Rev Ian Paisley's bag in Europe", an under-estimation of his role.

With a first-class law degree from Cambridge, he returned to the North in the early 1980s and was called to the Bar.

His father Joe, a customs' officer, is a DUP councillor in Enniskillen. In 1985 Nigel was elected to Belfast City Council. Three years later, aged 29, he became the youngest Lord Mayor of Belfast.

Mr Dodds escaped injury when the IRA tried to kill him as he visited his son in hospital three years ago.

Dr Paisley will not run for Europe in 2004 and that seat is a possibility for Mr Dodds.

Michael McGimpsey (53) and his brother, Chris, came to public notice in the Republic in the early 1980s when they went to Dublin to present the unionist case to the New Ireland Forum.

Four years ago they returned to Dublin to challenge Articles Two and Three of the Constitution but the case was eventually dismissed by the Supreme Court.

The McGimpseys come from a politically-active family in Newtownards, Co Down. Michael studied English, history and economics in TCD in the 1960s. He returned to Newtownards to work in his father's construction firm and opened a do-it-yourself business as a sideline.

He has always been on the liberal wing of the Ulster Unionist Party.

Hard working, determined and serious describe Dublin-born Ms de Brún (44). Fluent in Irish, which she once taught, and French, she has a sharp intellect, and has long been a staunch critic of the RUC. She has come to prominence only recently, mostly through her involvement in the talks and her media interviews. Little is known of her personal life but she moved to Belfast 20 years ago and was involved in community politics.

She emerged politically as a leader of the H-Block Committee before and during the hunger strikes at the Maze prison, and in 1982 joined Sinn Féin. She has been an ardchomhairle member for 15 years.

Her mother was born in Belfast and her father was from Cork but grew up in England.

Brid Rodgers (62) is a native Irish speaker from Gweedore, Co Donegal, but has lived since 1960 in the tense sectarian cauldron of mid-Ulster where her husband, also from Gweedore, was a dentist.

Her involvement in the civil rights movement and politics goes back as far as 1965 and in 1969 she led the first civil rights march through Lurgan.

In 1983 she was appointed to Seanad Éireann by the then Taoiseach, Dr Garret FitzGerald, when she was general secretary of the SDLP. She was previously party chairperson.

Long a local councillor in recent years she has been the SDLP's political representative during the various Drumcree disputes, ensuring that local activists and republicans did not totally monopolise the nationalist viewpoint. She has six children.