LONDON: The British and Irish prime ministers met political leaders in Belfast on Monday in a bid to end a political stalemate that has left Northern Ireland without a government for more than a year.
British Prime Minister Theresa May and her Irish counterpart, Leo Varadkar, were holding talks with the main parties in Northern Ireland’s collapsed power-sharing administration.
May’s office said the trip was aimed at encouraging the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party and Irish nationalists of the Sinn Fein party to resolve their differences.
Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant power-sharing government has been suspended since January 2017, when it broke down amid a scandal over a botched green-energy project. The rift soon widened to broader cultural and political issues, with Sinn Fein demands for Irish-language protections seen as the main sticking point.
The two parties have blamed each other for the impasse that threatens power-sharing, the key achievement of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord that ended decades of bloodshed.
Several UK-government-set deadlines to restore the Northern Ireland administration have passed without success, raising the specter that the British government might impose direct rule from London on Northern Ireland.
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UK, Irish leaders seek end to Northern Ireland stalemate
UK, Irish leaders seek end to Northern Ireland stalemate
Indonesia jails two Britons for drug smuggling
DENPASAR: Two British men were given lengthy jail terms Thursday by an Indonesian court after being found guilty of smuggling cocaine into the popular holiday island of Bali.
Kial Garth Robinson was sentenced to 11 years, while Paul Ezra Wilkinson landed a term of nine years.
Both were also ordered to pay a fine of around $60,000 or serve an additional 190 days.
Robinson, 29, was arrested in September last year at Ngurah Rai International Airport after an officer found two packages containing 1.3 kilograms of cocaine in his backpack.
Ho told the police that he was ordered by a man named Santos to transport the drugs from Barcelona to Bali and deliver them to Wilkinson, who had arrived a few days earlier.
Wilkinson, 48, was arrested in Canggu the next day.
Prosecutors said Robinson and Wilkinson were friends who lived in Thailand and had met in Barcelona a week before their arrests.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws, including the death penalty for traffickers, but has maintained a moratorium on executions for several years.
There are dozens of traffickers on death row in the country. Indonesia last carried out executions in 2016, killing one Indonesian and three Nigerian drug convicts by firing squad.
Kial Garth Robinson was sentenced to 11 years, while Paul Ezra Wilkinson landed a term of nine years.
Both were also ordered to pay a fine of around $60,000 or serve an additional 190 days.
Robinson, 29, was arrested in September last year at Ngurah Rai International Airport after an officer found two packages containing 1.3 kilograms of cocaine in his backpack.
Ho told the police that he was ordered by a man named Santos to transport the drugs from Barcelona to Bali and deliver them to Wilkinson, who had arrived a few days earlier.
Wilkinson, 48, was arrested in Canggu the next day.
Prosecutors said Robinson and Wilkinson were friends who lived in Thailand and had met in Barcelona a week before their arrests.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws, including the death penalty for traffickers, but has maintained a moratorium on executions for several years.
There are dozens of traffickers on death row in the country. Indonesia last carried out executions in 2016, killing one Indonesian and three Nigerian drug convicts by firing squad.
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