UK, Irish leaders seek end to Northern Ireland stalemate

British Prime Minister Theresa May visits the Bombardier factory in Belfast. May is in Belfast to engage with the main Northern Ireland political parties as they press ahead with efforts to agree the formation of an Executive. (AFP)

LONDON: The British and Irish prime ministers met political leaders in Belfast on Monday in a bid to end a political stalemate that has left Northern Ireland without a government for more than a year.
British Prime Minister Theresa May and her Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, were holding talks with the main parties in Northern Ireland’s collapsed power-sharing administration.
May’s office said the trip was aimed at encouraging the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party and Irish nationalists of the Sinn Fein party to resolve their differences.
Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government has been suspended since January 2017, when it broke down amid a scandal over a botched green-energy project. The rift soon widened to broader cultural and political issues, with Sinn Fein demands for Irish-language protections seen as the main sticking point.
The two parties have blamed each other for the impasse that threatens power-sharing, the key achievement of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord that ended decades of bloodshed.
Several UK-government-set deadlines to restore the Northern Ireland administration have passed without success, raising the specter that the British government might impose direct rule from London on Northern Ireland.