More than two-thirds of people in Northern Ireland believe big changes are required to the power-sharing institutions created by the Good Friday agreement, research commissioned by a parliamentary committee has found.
The same proportion of the population, 70%, think the peace accord of 1998 has failed to deliver stable governance with the Stormont assembly not sitting for nine of the 25 years that have elapsed since the Belfast agreement was struck.
The research was conducted by YouGov and Ohio State University for the House of Commons Northern Ireland affairs committee.
That level of scepticism about the deal’s success in delivering stability remained consistent across age, religion and political affiliation.
The committee chair, Simon Hoare, said the poll provided an “important snapshot” of current thinking in the region.
The devolved government sitting in Stormont was created under strand one of the Belfast Good Friday agreement, which was considered an ingenious way of getting previously warring sides, republicans and loyalists to run the country together.
Under the power-sharing system, elected politicians are required to self-designate as unionists, nationals or “other” to ensure laws could only be passed that worked for all communities.
A quarter of a century on, and three-quarters of the respondents in the survey consider the requirement that key decisions have to have support from both nationalist and unionist sides gives the DUP and Sinn Féin an effective veto, with growing parties such as Alliance locked out.
Stormont was collapsed for three years after a Sinn Féin walkout in 2017 and has been suspended for more than a year after the DUP pulled the plug in a protest over Brexit.
Support for reform is widespread but Bertie Ahern, one of the architects of the peace deal, has said it could only happen once the DUP was back in Stormont. The party, led by Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, said it would not be “browbeaten” into a return and few are expecting it to resume power-sharing until September.
Donaldson faced a cacophony of calls to return to Stormont in Belfast last week with leading figures involved in the peace deal, including Bill Clinton, urging politicians to face down “ugly” moments and “get the show on the road”.
“I ask you not to be discouraged, this is human affairs, there are very few permanent victories or defeats in human affairs. All these old ugly problems are always rearing their heads. You just have to suck it up and beat it back and deal with it,” Clinton told a conference at Queen’s University.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
SRINAGAR: On Saturday, Lieutenant General Upendra Dwivedi, the Northern Army Commander, visited the site of the militant attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, where five Indian soldiers were killed.
He reviewed the security in the border area and the ongoing combing operation to track down the militants who ambushed the Army truck on Thursday.
Top security officials, including BSF Director General S L Thaosen and ADGP Mukesh Singh, also visited the spot. The soldiers were from a Rashtriya Rifles unit deployed for counter-terror operations. Security forces have launched a manhunt in the dense forest area of Bhata Dhurian to nab the militants.
A high alert has been sounded in the twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch. Fourteen people were detained for questioning, but some have been released.
“Where barbed wire one sliced up the city, today we find a cathedral of learning built of glass that lets the [light shine] in and out,” Biden said. The agreement “just has a profound impact for someone who has come back to see it. It’s an incredible testament to the power and the possibilities of peace.”
Northern Ireland has been unable to form a government for nearly a year under rules that require its main pro-British party — the Democratic Unionist Party — to share power with Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein. The DUP is also holding out against a proposal aimed at settling post-Brexit trade concerns between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
But Biden made only glancing mention of the standoff, emphasizing the importance of democratic institutions and urging all parties in Northern Ireland to work together.
“For politics, no matter what divides us, if we look hard enough, there’s always areas that’s going to bring us together,” Biden said.
Northern Ireland has prospered overall since the agreement, Biden noted, even as critics say that it’s failing. Its gross domestic product has doubled, an initial number Biden said he expects to triple if growth stays on track as American businesses continue investing in the region. The president also nodded, as he often does, to Irish arts and culture, which has produced world-renowned poetry, movies and television shows in recent years.
Much of that growth has been driven by young people, Biden added, who will push Northern Ireland forward in widening fields like cyber and clean energy. The president also announced that later this year, Joe Kennedy III, the U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland for Economic Affairs, will lead a trade delegation of American companies to Northern Ireland.
“It’s up to us to keep this going,” he said, pledging to “sustain the peace, unleash this incredible economic opportunity, which is just beginning … Your history is our history. But even more important, your future is America’s future.”
Biden has studiously avoided any thorny political territory during his stint in Northern Ireland, saying only that he was “going to listen” to party leaders during a private meeting ahead of his speech.
The president earlier on Wednesday also ignored questions about the potential for a trade deal sought by the U.K., and officials said they did not expect him to address the issue during a meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Still, those political tensions have trailed Biden throughout what has largely been billed as a personal trip to reconnect with his ancestral roots.
Amanda Sloat, the National Security Council’s senior director for Europe, faced several questions on Wednesday about whether Biden’s pride in his Irish background signaled a dislike for the U.K.
“It’s simply untrue,” she said. “President Biden obviously is a very proud Irish American, he is proud of those Irish roots, but he is also a strong supporter of our bilateral relationship with the U.K.”
Sloat added that the Biden administration was working “in lockstep” with the U.K. on a variety of global challenges.
Perhaps aware of the scrutiny of his allegiances, Biden during his speech at Ulster University made uncharacteristically little mention of his Irish heritage. Instead, he kicked off the speech with a different anecdote about his family history, reminding the crowd that “Biden is English too.”
Following the speech, the president traveled to the Irish Republic for the first time since he traced his lineage through the countryside as vice president in 2016.
Myah Ward contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
LONDON — Joe Biden is not someone known for his subtlety.
His gaffe-prone nature — which saw him last week confuse the New Zealand rugby team with British forces from the Irish War of Independence — leaves little in the way of nuance.
But he is also a sentimental man from a long gone era of Washington, who specializes in a type of homespun, aw-shucks affability that would be seen as naff in a younger president.
His lack of subtlety was on show in Belfast last week as he issued a thinly veiled ultimatum to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — return to Northern Ireland’s power sharing arrangements or risk losing billions of dollars in U.S. business investment.
The DUP — a unionist party that does not take kindly to lectures from American presidents — is refusing to sit in Stormont, the Northern Ireland Assembly, due to its anger with the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol, which has created trade friction between the region and the rest of the U.K.
The DUP is also refusing to support the U.K.-EU Windsor Framework, which aims to fix the economic problems created by the protocol, despite hopes it would see the party reconvene the Northern Irish Assembly.
The president on Wednesday urged Northern Irish leaders to “unleash this incredible economic opportunity, which is just beginning.”
However, American business groups paint a far more complex and nuanced view of future foreign investment into Northern Ireland than offered up by Biden.
Biden told a Belfast crowd on Wednesday there were “scores of major American corporations wanting to come here” to invest, but that a suspended Stormont was acting as a block on that activity.
One U.S. business figure, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Biden’s flighty rhetoric was “exaggerated” and that many businesses would be looking beyond the state of the regional assembly to make their investment decisions.
The president spoke as if Ulster would be rewarded with floods of American greenbacks if the DUP reverses its intransigence, predicting that Northern Ireland’s gross domestic product (GDP) would soon be triple its 1998 level. Its GDP is currently around double the size of when the Good Friday Agreement was struck in 1998.
Emanuel Adam, executive director of BritishAmerican Business, said this sounded like a “magic figure” unless Biden “knows something we don’t know about.”
DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr. told POLITICO that U.S. politicians for “too long” have “promised some economic El Dorado or bonanza if you only do what we say politically … but that bonanza has never arrived and people are not naive enough here to believe it ever will.”
“A presidential visit is always welcome, but the glitter on top is not an economic driver,” he said.
Joe Biden addresses a crowd of thousands on April 14, 2023 in Ballina, Ireland | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
Facing both ways
The British government is hoping the Windsor Framework will ease economic tensions in Northern Ireland and create politically stable conditions for inward foreign direct investment.
The framework removes many checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and has begun to slowly create a more collaborative relationship between London and Brussels on a number of fronts — two elements which have been warmly welcomed across the Atlantic.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland is in a “special” position of having access to the EU’s single market, to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, and the U.K.’s internal market.
“That’s like the world’s most exciting economic zone,” Sunak said in February.
Jake Colvin, head of Washington’s National Foreign Trade Council business group, said U.S. firms wanted to see “confidence that the frictions over the protocol have indeed been resolved.”
“Businesses will look to mechanisms like the Windsor Framework to provide stability,” he said.
Marjorie Chorlins, senior vice president for Europe at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the Windsor Framework was “very important” for U.S. businesses and that “certainty about the relationship between the U.K. and the EU is critical.”
She said a reconvened Stormont would mean more legislative stability on issues like skills and healthcare, but added that there were a whole range of other broader U.K. wide economic factors that will play a major part in investment decisions.
This is particularly salient in a week where official figures showed the U.K.’s GDP flatlining and predictions that Britain will be the worst economic performer in the G20 this year.
“We want to see a return to robust growth and prosperity for the U.K. broadly and are eager to work with government at all levels,” Chorlins said.
“Political and economic instability in the U.K. has been a challenge for businesses of all sizes.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland is in a “special” position of having access to the EU’s single market | Pool photo by Paul Faith/Getty Images
Her words underline just how much global reputational damage last year’s carousel of prime ministers caused for the U.K., with Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey recently warning of a “hangover effect” from Liz Truss’ premiership and the broader Westminster psychodrama of 2022.
America’s Northern Ireland envoy Joe Kennedy, grandson of Robert Kennedy, accompanied the president last week and has been charged with drumming up U.S. corporate interest in Northern Ireland.
Kennedy said Northern Ireland is already “the number-one foreign investment location for proximity and market access.”
Northern Ireland has been home to £1.5 billion of American investment in the past decade and had the second-most FDI projects per capita out of all U.K. regions in 2021.
Claire Hanna, Westminster MP for the nationalist SDLP, believes reconvening Stormont would “signal a seriousness that there isn’t going to be anymore mucking around.”
“It’s also about the signal that the restoration of Stormont sends — that these are the accepted trading arrangements,” she said.
Hanna says the DUP’s willingness to “demonize the two biggest trading blocs in the world — the U.S. and EU” — was damaging to the country’s future economic prospects.
‘The money goes south’
At a more practical level, Biden’s ultimatum appears to carry zero weight with DUP representatives.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson made it clear last week that he was unmoved by Biden’s economic proclamations and gave no guarantee his party would sit in the regional assembly in the foreseeable future.
“President Biden is offering the hope of further American investment, which we always welcome,” Donaldson told POLITICO.
“But fundamental to the success of our economy is our ability to trade within our biggest market, which is of course the United Kingdom.”
A DUP official said U.S. governments had been promising extra American billions in exchange “for selling out to Sinn Féin and Dublin” since the 1990s and “when America talks about corporate investment, we get the crumbs and that investment really all ends up in the Republic [of Ireland].”
“President Biden is offering the hope of further American investment, which we always welcome,” Donaldson said | Behal/Irish Government via Getty Images
“The Americans talk big, but the money goes south,” the DUP official said.
This underscores the stark reality that challenges Northern Ireland any time it pitches for U.S. investment — the competing proposition offered by its southern neighbor with its internationally low 12.5 percent rate on corporate profits.
Emanuel Adam with BritishAmerican Business said there was a noticeable feeling in Washington that firms want to do business in Dublin.
“When [Irish Prime Minister] Leo Varadkar and his team were here recently, I could tell how confident the Irish are these days,” he said. “There are not as many questions for them as there are around the U.K.”
Biden’s economic ultimatum looks toothless from the DUP’s perspective and its resonance may be as short-lived as his trip to Belfast itself.
This story has been updatedto correct an historical reference.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
SRINAGAR: Seven northern states of the country, including Jammu & Kashmir, remain the highest contributors to the armed forces as they account for 72% of veer naris (war widows).
During a recent announcement, the Defence Minister disclosed that the seven northern states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jammu-Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh have a total of 10,521 veer naris out of the country’s 14,467, accounting for 72 percent.
“Punjab tops with 2,132 veer naris, which means that most of the soldiers belong to Punjab. Uttar Pradesh has 1,805 followed by Haryana with 1566,” said the Ministry of Defence in the Rajya Sabha on Monday while detailing the state-wise number of veer naris.
Rajasthan had 1,317 veer naris and Uttarakhand, located in the Himalayan region, stood fourth with 1,407. Meanwhile, Jammu & Kashmir UT remained ahead of several big states with 1,218 veer naris. The Ministry of Defence previously shared state-wise representation of troops in the Lok Sabha, revealing that north-western states including Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Delhi, along with UTs of Chandigarh and J&K, collectively account for 21.88% of troops and junior commissioned officers (JCOs) in the Army.
JCOs are appointed from the enlisted troops. The total strength of troops and JCOs in the Army is 11.54 lakhs, out of which 2.52 lakhs are from north-western states. Among these, Punjab has the highest contribution with 89,893 troops and JCOs, which constitutes 7.78% of the total strength. However, the Army does not keep a record of the domicile of its current 43,000 officers. This information was revealed in the Lok Sabha, where it was disclosed that the IAF and Navy maintain such records.
Data from the 2011 Census suggests the collective population of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Delhi, J&K and Chandigarh constitutes just 7.47% of the country’s population.
Yet, as many as 20,483 (15.85%) of the 1.29 lakh IAF airmen belong to the north-western states. In the case of the Navy, the north-western states have a share of 19.36% among sailors. Overall, the three forces have 13, 41,944 jawans, JCOs, airmen and sailors. The north-western states contribute 2, 84,440 (21.19%) of these.(KNO)
Kabul: Taliban fighters escort women’s march in support of the Taliban government outside Kabul University, Afghanistan, on Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021.AP/PTI (Representative Image)
Kabul: The Afghan security forces have discovered a weapon cache and mine-making center of Daesh, or Islamic State (IS), in Shiberghan, the capital of Afghanistan’s northern Jawzjan province, the provincial police chief said on Sunday.
Acting on a tip-off, the security forces raided a house in Sakhi Abad village of Shiberghan on Saturday and discovered a variety of arms and ammunition, including a suicide vest, hand grenades and objects used in making mines and explosive devices, Shah Mohammad Ahmadi said, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The official didn’t say whether anyone had been arrested.
However, the police chief claimed that the IS-affiliated militants were planning to launch subversive activities but their plot had been foiled.
In similar operations, the Afghan security forces discovered and seized arms and ammunition, including 17 AK-47 assault rifles, in the eastern Kunar province.
The Afghan forces have intensified their crackdown on the rival IS outfit and in the latest operations have killed four IS-affiliated militants on the outskirts of Kabul over the past week.
London: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday said he is “over the moon” with the Brexit agreement inked with the European Union (EU) aimed at resolving long-standing trade issues in the region.
Sunak is currently touring Northern Ireland to sell the new “Windsor Framework” agreed between the UK and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Windsor on Monday, which replaces the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol which caused trade disputes and severely strained UK-EU relations.
Sunak later made a statement in the House of Commons to declare that the new deal delivers “free-flowing trade” for UK territory Northern Ireland with the rest of Britain by “removing any sense of the border in the Irish Sea” and creates a red lane system to resolve issues with bordering EU member-state Ireland.
“I’m really pleased in fact, I’m over the moon that yesterday we managed to have a decisive breakthrough with our negotiations with the EU,” Sunak told local business representatives gathered at the Coca-Cola factory in County Antrim in Northern Ireland as he took questions from them on the framework.
“It’s about stability in Northern Ireland. It’s about real people and real businesses. It’s about showing that our Union, which has lasted for centuries, can and will endure. And it’s about breaking down the barriers between us,” he said.
Sunak insisted that the new framework puts the people of Northern Ireland in charge with active democratic consent by adding a new “Stormont Brake”.
This indicates that the devolved Parliament at Stormont in Belfast, backed by the UK, can veto new EU goods laws not supported by all communities in Northern Ireland.
The agreement concluded months of intensive discussions between the UK and EU to address problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol, agreed by former British prime minister Boris Johnson, who was conspicuously absent from the Commons session on Monday, as the Opposition repeatedly criticised his handling of the issue.
In a swipe at Sunak’s former boss, Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer said, “The Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip [Boris Johnson] told the people of Northern Ireland that his protocol meant ‘no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind’ on goods crossing the Irish Sea after Brexit.”
“That was nonsense. A point-blank refusal to engage with unionists in Northern Ireland in good faith, never mind taking their concerns seriously. And it inevitably contributed to the collapse of power-sharing in Northern Ireland,” Starmer said.
He urged Sunak to be “utterly unlike his predecessor” and not pretend the deal is something it is not.
Overall, Sunak’s statement in parliament was greeted with praise from his Conservative Party MPs and many in the opposition. The reaction of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which had withdrawn from the Northern Irish devolved government process over the Protocol, now remains crucial to the new Windsor Framework working in the long term. While the regional party said it is studying the deal’s fine print before giving its verdict, Sunak’s tour of the region is intended to build consensus on all sides.
“Parties will want to consider the agreement in detail, a process that will need time and care. And there are, of course, many voices and perspectives within Northern Ireland, and it is the job of the government to respect them all,” Sunak said in Parliament.
“As a Conservative, a Brexiteer, and a Unionist, I believe passionately with my head and my heart that it is the right way forward, right for Northern Ireland, and right for our United Kingdom,” he said.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, said on Monday (27) that he will submit to a vote in Parliament the agreement reached with the European Union (EU) to reform the Protocol on Northern Ireland.
“Parliament will hold a vote, at the appropriate time, and that vote will be respected,” Sunak told a news conference.
Sunak would also go to the House of Commons this Monday to explain the agreement with the EU to British MPs. This is one of the prime minister’s main challenges at the beginning of his term, in particular the need to obtain the support of the more eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (DUP), which are the forces that lead the opposition to the current protocol.
The leader of the DUP, Jeffrey Donaldson, assured that he will not give an immediate answer on his position, but that he will take time to analyze the text signed in Windsor by Sunak and the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen.
“It is important that we give everyone the time and space they need to study in detail the new regime that we have announced”, said the prime minister.
Sunak has a large majority in the House of Commons, which makes an eventual rebellion in the conservative ranks difficult. In addition, he was assured that the largest opposition Labor Party would secure the necessary votes to move the deal forward.
“Due to the nature and breadth of the deal, it will take some time for everyone to digest. But ultimately, it’s not about me or the politicians, it’s about the people of Northern Ireland and what is better for them”, assured Sunak.
According to the current protocol, Northern Ireland is included in the Community and British internal market, so trade controls between the United Kingdom and the EU are carried out between the island of Great Britain and Ireland, which avoids the increase of a physical border between the two Irelands and allows not to jeopardize the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.
This commercial border, located on the Irish Sea, has also created political problems among unionists, as they consider it to be detrimental to their relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom.
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( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )
The European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom finally reached an agreement on the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol, as reported by British government sources on Monday.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are meeting in Windsor, near London, for what they say are the “final” discussions of this dossier.
Later, they are scheduled to offer a joint press conference in Windsor, the city west of London. The head of the European Commission will also meet King Carlos III.
The leaders met in the town of Windsor (east London).
What is the protocol?
The Northern Irish protocol, signed in January 2020, is the main issue of contention between London and Brussels three years after the United Kingdom left the European Union.
This text regulates the movement of goods between the rest of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, the only land border with the European Union.
The protocol was intended to prevent a land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland from undermining the peace agreed in 1998 after three bloody decades, while protecting the single European market.
(Furthermore: UK announces plan to change Northern Ireland protocol)
The protocol was intended to prevent a land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland from undermining peace
But it raises practical problems by imposing customs controls on goods from Britain arriving in Northern Ireland, even if they remain in the British province.
The protocol has generated tensions between the EU and the UK, but it has also become an internal problem for Rishi Sunak, which faces opposition from staunch Brexit supporters and from unionists in the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who oppose any questioning of Northern Ireland’s membership of the United Kingdom.
The latter reject any de facto application of European legislation in the British province and have blocked the functioning of the local executive for a year.
The Northern Irish protocol was signed in January 2020 as part of Brexit.
The new proposal
According to the media, the negotiated agreement establishes a system of green and red lanes between Great Britain and the province.
(You can read: Russia responds to China’s proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine)
Goods destined for Northern Ireland would go through the green lane without routine controls, while those exported to the Republic of Ireland -in the EU- would go through the red lanes, for which reason they would undergo customs procedures in Northern Irish ports.
In addition, the European Court of Justice would remain as the final arbitrator in the event of a dispute over the single market rules that apply in Northern Ireland, something unionists opposed.
The negotiated agreement establishes a system of green and red lanes between Great Britain and the province
To appease unionists, London last spring threatened to withdraw unilaterally from the deal, sparking anger in Dublin and Brussels, which raised the specter of a trade war.
Sunak is scheduled to meet with his top ministers before the press conference with von der Leyen in mid-afternoon.
Subsequently, the British Prime Minister will return to London to address the deputies in the House of Commons.
AFP AND EFE
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( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )
DUBLIN — As if political tensions in Northern Ireland weren’t bad enough, Irish Republican Army die-hards unwilling to accept their side’s cease-fire appear determined to make matters worse.
An off-duty police officer is in hospital in a critical condition after being shot several times at close range Wednesday night as he coached a youth football practice on the outskirts of the Northern Irish town of Omagh. No group claimed responsibility, but politicians from all sides agreed that one of the small IRA splinter groups still active in the U.K. region must be to blame.
“The people behind this attack think they’re at war. Well they’re not,” said Colum Eastwood, the moderate Irish nationalist leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. “Their fight isn’t with any government, any police service or anyone else. It’s with the people of Ireland who have chosen peace. And it’s a fight they will never, never win.”
The last time any of the IRA factions killed a Northern Ireland police officer was in 2011, again in Omagh — also the scene of the deadliest attack of them all, when a Real IRA car bomb killed 29 people in 1998 in hopes of wrecking that year’s Good Friday peace accord.
The largest Irish republican paramilitary group, the Provisional IRA, killed nearly 300 officers as part of its own 27-year campaign of shootings and bombings, but laid down its arms in 1997 and surrendered them to foreign disarmament officials in 2005.
That key peacemaking step, required as part of the Good Friday deal, ultimately helped persuade the Democratic Unionist Party to end its opposition to power-sharing and finally form a unity government in 2007 with their Irish republican enemies in Sinn Féin, longtime partners of the Provisional IRA. However, last year the DUP collapsed their coalition as part of its campaign against post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, a dispute that U.K. and EU negotiators have spent months trying to resolve.
Wednesday night’s shooting brought back grim memories from a generation ago when such violence was a nightly occurrence, an era when militants effectively filled Northern Ireland’s prevailing political vacuum with bloodshed. The Good Friday pact and the cross-community government it spawned were supposed to keep such violence at bay.
With the Stormont parliamentary building shuttered amid Brexit fallout, politicians from all sides briefly spoke with one voice on social media to condemn the officer’s attackers.
“Those responsible for such horror must be brought to justice,” said Britain’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, who has been in the post only since September.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
