Northern Ireland’s joint government faced fresh pressure after a pro-British party said it would reject a key political deal in a vote yesterday, despite a reported intervention from former US president George W. Bush.
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) said it would not endorse a hard-fought agreement struck last month to transfer sensitive policing and justice powers from London to the British province.
Agreement on the thorny issue between Northern Ireland’s other parties was only reached after days of talks and amid growing fears for the fragile administration, a vital part of the peace process.
The UUP, which draws its support from the Protestant community, is not the largest pro-British party in the Northern Ireland Assembly and its refusal would not doom the vote on the deal later yesterday.
The main Protestant party, the Democratic Unionist Party, and their Catholic power-sharing partners, Sinn Fein, agree on the deal and will have enough strength to push it through the assembly.
But the refusal by the UUP to support a deal deprives political leaders of hoped for consensus on the matter. The Ulster Unionists once ruled the province and used to be its biggest party.
UUP leader Reg Empey said his party would vote against the proposals as it did not believe the government was ready to take on the new powers.
“We are prepared to go forward and look to the future, but not under the cosh of all this blackmail and bullying,” he said.
The refusal came despite high-level international intervention, with Bush stepping into the crisis in a rare move since leaving office, the Guardian newspaper said.
Bush made a plea to David Cameron, the leader of Britain’s main opposition Conservative party, which has an electoral pact with the UUP, said the paper.
Bush pressed the Conservative leader to use his influence to get the pro-British party to support the agreement, the report said, citing sources familiar with the negotiations.
“There was a feeling that a conservative to conservative conversation was the right way to go about this,” one source familiar with the contact told the paper.
Northern Ireland’s three decades of violence known as “The Troubles,” in which more than 3,500 people died, was largely ended by a 1998 peace deal which paved the way for devolution of power from politicians in London to Belfast.
There are still splinter groups opposed to the peace process and sporadic violence occasionally rattles the province.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not