DUP expects progress on Northern Ireland stalemate within weeks

BELFAST, Aug 9 (Reuters) – The leader of Northern Ireland’s largest pro-British political party expects to receive a “final” answer from the British government on his post-Brexit trade concerns in a few weeks, but it could be months before let it end a political stalemate.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) collapsed the decentralized executive 18 months ago in protest of the first post-Brexit deal with the EU. They then rejected a new agreement, the so-called Windsor Framework, reached in February to end many of the new trade controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The British government subsequently pledged to introduce legislation to further protect trade with Northern Ireland and tamp down the DUP, but has yet to come up with proposals and it is unclear how they would be compatible with the revised EU-UK trade deal.

“I hope that in the next few weeks we will have a definitive answer from the British government,” DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson told reporters after meeting Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in Belfast.

“I don’t know if Stormont (the Northern Ireland assembly) will be restored in weeks or months, that very much depends on the (British) government’s response to the concerns we have raised about the Windsor Framework.”

Unlike the rest of the UK, since Brexit Northern Ireland has effectively remained in the EU single market to keep its land border with Ireland open, a key aspect of the 1998 Good Friday peace deal that ended decades of sectarian bloodshed.

Reporting by Amanda Ferguson, writing by Padraic Halpin; edited by william james

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