LONDON, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Monday that the new deal which helped bring back power-sharing at the Northern Ireland Assembly (Stormont) would protect Northern Ireland's place within the Union.
Sunak was in Belfast to meet with local leaders, including First Minister Michelle O'Neill from Sinn Fein and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), as well as Sunak's Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar. The UK Prime Minister's visit came two days after Stormont power-sharing was restored, following a two-year hiatus.
"We have worked very hard and succeeded in protecting Northern Ireland's place in our Union, and building on what we achieved with the Windsor Framework to ensure the smooth flow of trade within the United Kingdom," Sunak said.
Northern Ireland's new power-sharing Executive called on the UK to provide more funding than the promised financial package of 3.3 billion pounds (4.14 billion U.S. dollars) for the region, which was included in the deal to restore the devolved administration.
The region's long-running deadlock ended last week after the DUP and the UK government struck a deal to remove routine checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. The deal was subsequently approved by the UK parliament.
The DUP, the largest pro-British party in Northern Ireland, collapsed the power-sharing government with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein in February 2022, in a dispute over post-Brexit trade rules.
The DUP has been in vehement opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol, the trade solution agreed by London and the European Union (EU) to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the neighboring Republic of Ireland.
The power-sharing model of government in Northern Ireland was introduced as part of the Good Friday Agreement in the 1990s, as a way of ending decades of violence. It requires the representation of both nationalist and unionist parties in any government. ■
