Britain will launch a "short and sharp" new round of negotiations to fix the problems besetting Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord, Prime Minister Tony Blair said after meeting three party delegations from the British territory.
Blair, speaking beside Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern after three hours of talks, said Wednesday that he remained confident that power-sharing between British Protestants and Irish Catholics could be revived.
He said talks starting next month in Belfast would dissect what went wrong in the province's previous Catholic-Protestant administration, which fell apart 14 months ago over an Irish Republican Army spying scandal.
"There is general agreement it should be a short and sharp and focused review of the way the institutions work and how we can overcome the current impasse," Blair said.
Blair and Ahern have spent the past year struggling to revive power-sharing, the central objective of the Good Friday pact.
Their efforts suffered a potentially mortal blow Nov. 26 when Northern Ireland voters entrenched hard-liners in the province's legislature, the bedrock of any Catholic-Protestant administration.
While Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party, won most seats on the Catholic side of the house, the Democratic Unionists -- who reject the Good Friday deal -- won even more seats on the Protestant benches.
Democratic Unionist leader Ian Paisley said after meeting Blair in London on Tuesday that his party would participate in next month's negotiations, but would not talk to Sinn Fein. The 77-year-old firebrand insisted that any new power-sharing formula must exclude Sinn Fein.
The British government plans to keep the Democratic Unionists in a separate room from Sinn Fein during the Belfast talks, which may run into March.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams suggested Wednesday it was unrealistic to expect the IRA to make more disarmament moves as part of any new effort to revive power-sharing. He noted that the IRA handed a cache of weapons in secret to disarmament officials in October in a failed effort to encourage Protestant voters to back compromise.
Blair and Ahern also met Wednesday with leaders of the two moderate parties vanquished in the Nov. 26 election: the Protestants of the Ulster Unionists, and the Catholics of the Social Democratic and Labor Party or SDLP.
As the two largest parties in Northern Ireland's legislature, the Ulster Unionists and SDLP in December 1999 formed the first 12-member administration, which included two figures each from Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists.
But the Democratic Unionists refused to attend Cabinet meetings because of Sinn Fein's presence. And the coalition suffered several two lengthy breakdowns over the IRA's refusal to disarm fully as the Good Friday deal proposed.
The administration finally collapsed in October last year after police accused Sinn Fein's top legislative aide of gathering intelligence on potential IRA targets. Britain resumed a system called "direct rule" -- with several British lawmakers governing the province -- that was originally imposed on Northern Ireland in 1972.
The pledge by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to “work, work, work, work and work” for her country has been named the catchphrase of the year, recognizing the effort Japan’s first female leader had to make to reach the top. Takaichi uttered the phrase in October when she was elected as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Many were initially as worried about her work ethic as supportive of her enthusiasm. In a country notorious for long working hours, especially for working women who are also burdened with homemaking and caregiving, overwork is a sensitive topic. The recognition triggered a
‘HEART IS ACHING’: Lee appeared to baffle many when he said he had never heard of six South Koreans being held in North Korea, drawing criticism from the families South Korean President Lee Jae-myung yesterday said he was weighing a possible apology to North Korea over suspicions that his ousted conservative predecessor intentionally sought to raise military tensions between the war-divided rivals in the buildup to his brief martial law declaration in December last year. Speaking to reporters on the first anniversary of imprisoned former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s ill-fated power grab, Lee — a liberal who won a snap presidential election following Yoon’s removal from office in April — stressed his desire to repair ties with Pyongyang. A special prosecutor last month indicted Yoon and two of his top
The Philippines deferred the awarding of a project that is part of a plan to build one of the world’s longest marine bridges after local opposition over the potential involvement of a Chinese company due to national security fears. The proposals are “undergoing thorough review” by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which acts as a lender and an overseer of the project to ensure it meets international environmental and governance standards, the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways said in a statement on Monday in response to queries from Bloomberg. The agency said it would announce the winning bidder once ADB
IN ABSENTIA: The MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London, a niece of deposed Bangladesh prime minister Sheik Hasina, condemned the ‘flawed and farcical’ trial A court in Bangladesh yesterday sentenced British Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail after a judge ruled she was complicit in corrupt land deals with her aunt, the country’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina. A judge found Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, guilty of misusing her “special influence” as a British politician to coerce Hasina into giving valuable pieces of land to her mother, brother and sister. Siddiq’s mother, Sheikh Rehana, was given seven years in prison and considered the prime participant in the case. The trial had been carried out in absentia: Neither Hasina, Siddiq,
RSS