UK demands 'real leadership' from Northern Ireland unionists

The UK government on Tuesday issued its strongest appeal yet to unionists in Northern Ireland to restore the region's power-sharing government, after Brexit disrupted a delicate political balance.

The Conservative government called on the pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to embrace "real leadership" and emulate predecessors who forged Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord, which ended three decades of violence against British rule.

The DUP has been boycotting the divided territory's government at Stormont over post-Brexit trading arrangements agreed with the European Union, despite itself supporting the UK's split from the EU.

The party has been under sustained pressure from London, Dublin, Brussels and Washington, peaking in a visit to the island last week by US President Joe Biden.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris delivered the UK government's sharpest rhetoric yet, in a speech to a conference marking the 25th anniversary of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement.

Everyone in Northern Ireland wants better public services, economic prosperity and a brighter future for their children, the minister told the audience at Queen's University in Belfast.

"The biggest threat to Northern Ireland's place in the (UK) union is failing to deliver on these priorities," he said.

"Others who share that (pro-UK) view should put the union first, restore the devolved institutions and get on with the job of delivering for the people of Northern Ireland."

Citing the compromises forged by diehard unionists in 1998 and subsequently, Heaton-Harris added that "real leadership is about knowing when to say yes and having the courage to do so".

The three-day conference in Belfast has a high-powered cast of leaders who brokered the 1998 deal, including former UK prime minister Tony Blair, then-Irish premier Bertie Ahern and ex-president Bill Clinton.

At the conference, EU Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic said he had consulted widely with business leaders in Northern Ireland.

"What... I heard very clearly was, they need predictability," said Sefcovic, who led talks for the new deal with the UK, dubbed the "Windsor Framework".

"They need stability," he added, urging political leaders to learn from the "inclusivity" that resulted in the Good Friday Agreement.

The 1998 peace deal ended border checks on the island of Ireland as a condition for overcoming "The Troubles".

But Brexit upended Northern Ireland's fragile status quo by necessitating the return of a trading border between the UK and the EU.

The customs checks are happening now between Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) and Northern Ireland, to the DUP's fury.

DUP lawmaker Emma Little-Pengelly told the conference that the party's concerns were not being taken seriously enough.

"We need to build the strong (Stormont) foundations to make the institutions work. Not just this year, or the next five years, but for the next 25 years," she said.

Other Northern Irish leaders said the DUP and Conservatives only had themselves to blame for refusing to accept the inevitable consequences of Brexit.

The DUP began its boycott in February last year, before losing Stormont elections for the first time to the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein. Local council elections are due next month.

Ireland's foreign minister Micheal Martin said London and Brussels had worked hard to clinch the Windsor Framework, in a bid to placate the DUP by diluting the border checks.

All leaders in Northern Ireland had the "responsibility to accept democratic outcomes", Martin said.

Sinn Fein's leader Mary Lou McDonald predicted that Ireland would be reunited within the next 25 years, but stressed that preparations needed to start now for a referendum on both sides of the border.

Unionists "equally need to have a stake in what can be the most incredible opportunity for this incredible island", she told the conference.