Northern Ireland’s DUP resists pressure to end govt boycott

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — In Belfast this week, leaders of the U.K., the EU and two U.S. presidents have urged Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party restore the mothballed Belfast government and reap the reward of more economic investment. U.S. trade envoy Joe Kennedy III said that “there can be no prosperity without peace, and there can be no peace without prosperity.” The message has been received badly by the DUP, which walked out of the government last year to protest post-Brexit trade rules and says it won’t be bullied back in. The political crisis is clouding 25th anniversary commemorations for the 1998 Good Friday peace accord that ended three decades of sectarian bloodshed.