Northern Ireland’s feuding leaders were to meet yesterday in a bid to defuse a growing political crisis that is threatening the British province’s power-sharing administration, media reported.
Martin McGuinness, Northern Irish deputy first minister, will hold talks with First Minister Peter Robinson to end a bitter devolution row, the Press Association news agency said, without citing a source.
Renewed discussions to break the impasse on policing and justice powers come after negotiations between McGuinness’s Sinn Fein party and their power-sharing partners broke down last week.
Sinn Fein, which is Catholic and wants a united Ireland, shares power with Robinson’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — a pro-British, Protestant group.
FEARS
Efforts are intensifying to halt a feared collapse of the troubled province’s administration, with Sinn Fein confirming McGuinness had talked to both the British and Irish prime ministers about the issue on Sunday.
It also emerged that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was to meet in London with his Irish counterpart Brian Cowen to discuss the crisis yesterday. The Irish leader’s visit comes just 11 days after his last talks with Brown in the British capital.
A British government spokesman said the talks were “part of the ongoing discussions on Northern Ireland.”
DEVOLUTION
Sinn Fein and the DUP disagree over the issue of the transfer of policing and justice powers from London to Belfast — a crucial piece in the devolution jigsaw.
Sinn Finn accuses the DUP of blocking a deal to overcome the impasse.
Three years ago Sinn Fein backed the new policing arrangements in Northern Ireland on condition that the province eventually took over political responsibility for law and order from London.
Cowen on Sunday described the situation as “serious.”
“I’ll be working with [Gordon Brown] in the coming days to get this matter resolved,” he said.
Even before the long-running devolution row worsened, Northern Irish politics were gripped by scandal after Robinson stepped down temporarily amid a sex and money scandal involving his politician wife.
He is fighting allegations that he was aware his wife Iris had secured a £50,000 (US$80,000) donation to enable her 19-year-old lover to set up a restaurant business.
Three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland were largely ended by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but two British soldiers and a policeman were shot dead last year in attacks claimed by dissident republicans.
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