Britain and Ireland resume their joint efforts this week to revive deadlocked peace talks in Northern Ireland, aiming to forge common ground between deeply opposed sectarian groups.
The meetings hosted on Wednesday by Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen and Paul Murphy, Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, will include all of the province's political parties at the parliamentary building in Belfast.
But nearly two years after Northern Ireland's power-sharing assembly and executive were suspended, there will still be no collective talks, as the hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) continues to refuse any direct negotiation with Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern will lead further talks with the Northern Ireland parties from September 16 to 18.
London and Dublin have been trying to breathe new life into the province's moribund political process, which broke down in October 2002 when claims of spying by the IRA led Britain to reimpose direct rule.
The crux of the conflict lies with mainly Catholic Sinn Fein, which wants the province reunited with Ireland, and the DUP, which like other loyalist parties wants it to remain part of Britain.
Both have been strengthened in recent elections and, bolstered by that mandate, are expected to bring a list of rival demands to the talks.
Sinn Fein, led by Gerry Adams, wants the DUP and other unionists to pledge to implement the Good Friday agreement, the historic 1998 deal which put into place the power-sharing government and led to a radical drop in sectarian violence.
In return, the republicans claim, they will ensure that the IRA disarms, disbands and declares its longstanding paramilitary campaign for independence over.
But the DUP, led by Ian Paisley, has said it will push for significant changes to the Good Friday accords.
Before it will sign up to another government with Sinn Fein, the party wants a six-month waiting period to ensure that the IRA has stuck to the pledge of non-violence.
Its deputy leader, Peter Robinson, warned that it would also call for greater limits on the role of "north-south bodies" created in the Good Friday deal to coordinate relations between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
"No unionist can be in the business of working for a united Ireland," Robinson said, adding that the party would oppose any "politically motivated" use of the bodies.
Former US president Bill Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, made an appeal to all parties to renew peace efforts during a visit last week to the region.
"I am encouraged by some of the comments in recent weeks," Bill Clinton said Thursday in Belfast after talks with the political parties.
When asked whether the IRA would decommission its armed groups, he replied: "I don't know." But when asked if Northern Ireland would see pre-1998 levels of violence, Bill Clinton said, "I don't think the people will allow the situation to go back to where it was."
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
RSS