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."
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS