Johnson in Belfast amid deepening EU row

BELFAST • British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stepped into an increasingly bitter row yesterday when he visited Belfast, Northern Ireland, to urge the formation of a power-sharing executive, which is being blocked by a Brexit dispute.

In a historic development, the role of Northern Ireland's first minister is set to be taken by the pro-Irish party Sinn Fein, after it triumphed in elections to the Stormont assembly earlier this month.

But the pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), angered at the "Northern Ireland Protocol" agreed as part of Britain's Brexit deal with the European Union, has blocked the election of a Speaker at Stormont.

Mr Johnson was set to meet all parties involved and was expected to tell them that London will "play its part to ensure political stability", but that Northern Ireland politicians must "get back to work" to deal with "bread-and-butter issues", according to a statement from his office on Sunday.

The DUP is refusing to help form an executive until the protocol is changed to get rid of trade checks between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. It believes the checks are threatening the province's status within the United Kingdom.

Mr Johnson's government also insists that the protocol is threatening the delicate balance of peace in Northern Ireland between the pro-Irish nationalist community and those in favour of continued union with the UK.

It has warned that it will trigger Article 16 of the Brexit deal to suspend the agreement, or legislate to eliminate its requirements from UK law, unless the EU agrees to change it.

Writing in the Belfast Telegraph yesterday, Mr Johnson said that those who wanted to scrap the protocol were "focusing on the wrong thing".

"I hope the EU's position changes," he wrote. "If it does not, there will be a necessity to act."

"We will set out a more detailed assessment and next steps to Parliament in the coming days, once I return from discussions with the local parties."

In London, Mr Johnson's spokesman said Foreign Secretary Liz Truss would speak in Parliament today "to set out the rationale for our approach".

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney warned London against taking unilateral action.

"Northern Ireland is about compromise and trying to find middle-ground positions that everybody can live with, to maintain political stability," Mr Coveney told journalists in Brussels.

"That's the approach we need to take at the moment, not a unilateral action or threats of unilateral action, which I think is deeply unhelpful."

He added: "To act unilaterally to break international law, to not respect the democratic decisions in Northern Ireland would make matters significantly worse, not better, in terms of trying to solve the problems of the protocol."

Sinn Fein's Northern Ireland leader Michelle O'Neill has, meanwhile, accused the DUP of holding the British-ruled territory to "ransom".

"I intend to put it to him (Mr Johnson) directly that he needs to stop pandering to the DUP," she told reporters last week. The UK government was "playing a game of chicken with the (European) commission right now, and we're caught in the middle", added the First Minister-elect.

The protocol mandates checks on goods coming to the province from England, Scotland and Wales, to ensure no return of a physical border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland to the south.

The elimination of the hard border was a key strand of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE