London — Northern Ireland has begun a “decade of opportunity” during which it will hold a vote on unification with Ireland, the UK territory’s first nationalist leader said in an interview aired Sunday.

Pro-Irish unity politician Michelle O’Neill made history on Saturday  becoming Northern Ireland’s first minister, in a return of power-sharing after the biggest pro-UK party ended a two-year boycott.

Speaking shortly after the landmark for the UK region, Sinn Fein’s O’Neill said she expected a referendum on reunifying with the Republic of Ireland in the next 10 years.

“Yes. I believe we’re in a decade of opportunity,” she told Sky News when asked if she anticipated a so-called border poll within that timeframe. 

“There are so many things that are changing all the old norms, the nature of the state, the fact that a nationalist republican was never supposed to be first minister. This all speaks to that change.”

Northern Ireland was carved from Ireland in 1921 with an in-built Protestant majority, after pro-UK unionists had threatened civil war as the island sought self-rule from Britain.

Instead, three decades of sectarian conflict erupted within the UK territory in the late 1960s.

A 1998 peace deal largely ended the violence and provides for the possibility of an all-Ireland vote on unification, often referred to as a border poll.

Under the terms of the accord, the British and Irish governments should organize a vote if it becomes apparent that “a majority of those voting would express a wish” for Northern Ireland to split from the UK.

The mechanism for triggering such a referendum was never spelt out, but the trigger is seen as consistent reliable polling on the issue.

O’Neill has been first minister-designate since May 2022, when Sinn Fein became the largest party in elections for the 90-seat assembly amid shifting demographics towards the old Catholic minority.

But until this week, a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) boycott of the Northern Ireland Assembly had prevented her from taking up the role. 

Following two years of protracted negotiations, the DUP returned to power-sharing after this week agreeing a deal with London over post-Brexit trade rules it opposed.

DUP lawmaker Emma Little-Pengelly has become deputy first minister, a post which has equal weight with O’Neill’s.

As part of the agreement with the DUP, the UK government released a paper stating that it “sees no realistic prospect of a border poll leading to a united Ireland,” citing recent polling.

“We believe that… Northern Ireland’s future in the UK will be secure for decades to come and as such the conditions for a border poll are unlikely to be objectively met,” it added.

O’Neill said she disagrees with the assessment.

“I would absolutely contest what the British government have said in that document, insofar as my election to the post of first minister demonstrates the change that’s happening on this island, and that’s a good thing.”
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LONDON — An Irish nationalist made history Saturday by becoming Northern Ireland’s first minister as the government returned to work after a two-year boycott by unionists.

 

Sinn Fein Vice President Michelle O’Neill was named first minister in the government that under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday peace accord shares power equally between Northern Ireland’s two main communities — British unionists who want to stay in the U.K., and Irish nationalists who seek to unite with Ireland.

 

Northern Ireland was established as a unionist, Protestant-majority part of the U.K. in 1921, following independence for the Republic of Ireland, so O’Neill’s nomination was seen as a highly symbolic moment for nationalists.

 

“This is a historic day which represents a new dawn,” O’Neill said. “That such a day would ever come would have been unimaginable to my parents and grandparents’ generation. Because of the Good Friday Agreement that old state that they were born into is gone. A more democratic, more equal society has been created making this a better place for everyone.”

 

O’Neill will share power with deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly from the Democratic Unionist Party. The two will be equals, but O’Neill, whose party captured more seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly in the 2022 elections, will hold the more prestigious title.

Neither side can govern without agreement from the other. Government business ground to a halt over the past two years after the DUP walked out to protest trade issues related to Brexit.

 

O’Neill, 47, who was born in the Republic of Ireland but raised in the north, comes from a family with links to the militant Irish Republican Army. Her father was imprisoned as an IRA member, an uncle raised money for the group and two of her cousins were shot — one fatally — by security forces.

 

O’Neill has been criticized for attending events commemorating the IRA and told an interviewer there was “no alternative” to the group’s armed campaign during the Troubles, a period of about 30 years of violent conflict over the future of Northern Ireland, which ended with the Good Friday accords.

 

“I don’t think any Irish person ever woke up one morning and thought that conflict was a good idea, but the war came to Ireland,” she said in 2022. “I think at the time there was no alternative, but now, thankfully, we have an alternative to conflict and that’s the Good Friday agreement.”

 

At 15, O’Neill became pregnant, and her mother quit work to help raise her granddaughter so O’Neill could stay in school. She said the Catholic school she attended had not been supportive and pregnancy had been a “very negative” experience.

 

“You were nearly made to feel girls like you can’t be at school, that kind of a thing,” she said.

As a member of Sinn Fein, the party affiliated with the IRA, O’Neill was elected in 2005 to the Dungannon Borough Council, replacing her father. She was elected to the Stormont Assembly in 2007.

 

Both O’Neill and Little-Pengelly, 44, grew up under the shadow of the Troubles and pledged to work together to bridge divides that once seemed insurmountable.

 

“The past with all its horror can never be forgotten, and nor will it be allowed to be rewritten but while we are shaped by the past, we are not defined by it,” Little-Pengelly said. “The experience of my childhood gave me the drive and desire to make a different future not just for myself, but to do all that I could and can to ensure a better future for all of us.”

 

Former Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, who helped broker the historic peace agreement, was in the gallery to witness O’Neill’s nomination along with her grown up daughter and son.

 

“As an Irish Republican, I pledge cooperation and genuine honest effort with those colleagues who are British, of a unionist tradition, and who cherish the Union,” O’Neill said. “This is an assembly for all — Catholic, Protestant and dissenter.”

 

U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed the restoration of the Northern Ireland executive and assembly. In a statement from the White House, he said, “I look forward to seeing the renewed stability of a power-sharing government that strengthens the peace dividend, restores public services, and continues building on the immense progress of the last decades.”

Clare Rice, an academic researcher in politics, said O’Neill’s new position was “hugely symbolic” and “hugely significant” despite there being no difference beyond semantics from her previous role as deputy first minister.

 

“All eyes today will be on that symbolic nomination,” Rice told the BBC. “That is going to be the story that comes out of today, second only to the fact that we’re here at all.”

 

The return to government came exactly two years after a DUP boycott over a dispute about trade restrictions for goods coming into Northern Ireland from Great Britain. Northern Ireland’s 1.9 million people were left without a functioning administration as the cost of living soared and public services were strained.

 

An open border between the north and the republic was a key pillar of the peace process that ended the Troubles, so checks were imposed instead between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

 

An agreement a year ago between the U.K. and the EU, known as the Windsor Framework, eased customs checks and other hurdles but didn’t go far enough for the DUP, which continued its boycott.

 

The U.K. government this week agreed to new changes that would eliminate routine checks and paperwork for most goods entering Northern Ireland, although some checks will remain for illegal goods or disease prevention.
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After two years of full-scale war, a survey shows Ukrainians are more united than ever in their rejection of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ambitions for their country. But pride at their success in standing up to a much larger adversary is tempered by anxiety over future support from the international community. VOA Eastern Europe Bureau Chief Myroslava Gongadze reports. VOA footage by Yevhenii Shynkar.
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paris — France’s foreign minister travels to the Middle East on Saturday to test ideas about reviving an Israeli-Palestinian political process after the Gaza war as Europe tries to play a role in a conflict that has deeply divided the European Union.

“There will be a discussion with his regional counterparts, especially Israeli and Palestinian counterparts, to see how to restart a political perspective in the region,” Deputy foreign ministry spokesperson Christophe Lemoine told reporters in a news briefing.

He was referring to Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne’s trip to Egypt, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon, where he will also continue French efforts to defuse tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

European Union member states are divided on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their response has mostly been to try to ease the humanitarian situation in the enclave.

But with the U.S. administration largely backing Israel and entering an election period, there is a growing sentiment within the bloc that it has to use its relationship with Arab states to come up with a plan for when the moment comes.

The Gaza war was triggered by fighters from the Hamas militant group who stormed across the border fence into Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 27,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, thousands more wounded, the enclave left in ruins and many more displaced.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell last month sent a discussion paper to the EU’s 27 member countries, suggesting a roadmap to peace in the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That was received cautiously. But French diplomats say Paris is looking to work with its main EU partners to narrow differences on the issue so that they can then work with Arab states to put a joint proposal together for when there is a proper ceasefire.

“This time we have to be ready. What’s happened is too serious and so in a way it presents us with an opportunity. We looked at the past. We didn’t deliver as Europeans,” said a French diplomatic source.
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In a rare intervention, a senior U.S. official has urged Britain to reassess the size of its armed forces, given the numerous threats the West faces. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the official’s comments echo concerns of senior military commanders in Britain.
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THE HAGUE — The United Nations’ highest court will rule Friday if a case in which Ukraine has accused Russia of violating international law, by saying its invasion was launched to stop an alleged genocide, can move forward.

Ukraine brought the case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

While the case revolves around the 1948 Genocide Convention, Kyiv does not accuse Moscow of committing genocide in Ukraine. Instead, it says Russia violated the genocide treaty by justifying the invasion by saying it was needed to stop an alleged genocide of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.

In hearings in September last year, lawyers for Moscow urged judges to throw out the case, saying Kyiv’s legal arguments were flawed and the court had no jurisdiction.

Ukraine argued there was no risk of genocide in eastern Ukraine, where it had been fighting Russian-backed forces since 2014.

Moscow has said Ukraine is using the case as a roundabout way to get a ruling on the overall legality of Russia’s military action.

More than two dozen European states, as well as Australia and Canada, have backed Kyiv by giving formal statements to the court, stressing they believe the case should move forward.

The court has already issued emergency measures in March 2022 in this case ordering Russia to immediately halt its military operations in Ukraine. While the court’s rulings are final and legally binding, it has no way to enforce them and some states, like Russia, have ignored their orders.

If the ICJ does decide the Ukraine-Russia genocide case can move forward, it could take many months before the court will hear the full case.

Earlier this week Ukraine had a small victory at the ICJ when the judges ruled Russia had violated U.N. treaties against the financing of terrorism and discrimination in a different case that dealt with incidents from 2014.
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BRUSSELS — Farmers descended on Brussels to press a summit of European Union leaders to do more to help them with taxes, rising costs and cheap imports, throwing eggs at the European Parliament, starting fires near the building and setting off fireworks.

Major thoroughfares in Brussels, the heart of the European Union, were blocked by around 1,000 tractors, according to a police estimate.

One tractor displayed a banner saying “If you love the earth, support those who manage it” as farmers from Belgium and other European countries try to make themselves heard by EU leaders meeting later.

Another banner read: “No farmers, no food.”

Security personnel in riot gear stood guard behind barriers where the leaders are due to meet, a few blocks away from the European Parliament building where tractors were parked in a central square.

“If you see with how many people we are here today, and if you see it’s all over Europe, so you must have hope. We must have hope that these people see that farming is necessary. It’s the food, you know,” said Kevin Bertens, a farmer from just outside Brussels.

Farmers say they are not being paid enough, are choked by taxes and green rules and face unfair competition from abroad.

They have already secured several measures, including the bloc’s executive commission proposals to limit farm imports from Ukraine and loosen some environmental regulations on fallow lands.

In France, where farmers have been protesting for weeks, the government has dropped plans to gradually reduce subsidies on agricultural diesel and promised more aid.

But farmers say that is not enough, and protests have spread to countries including Belgium, Italy, Spain and Portugal.

 

Mercosur trade talks

The protests across Europe come ahead of European Parliament elections in June in which the far right, for whom farmers represent a growing constituency, is seen making gains.

While the farmers’ crisis is not officially on the agenda of the EU summit, it is bound to be discussed, at least on the margins.

Already, with all eyes on Viktor Orban as the other 26 EU leaders want to convince him at the summit to join a plan to offer stable financing to Ukraine, the Hungarian Prime Minister made a point of meeting farmers overnight.

“We need to find new leaders who truly represent the interests of the people,” his spokesman quoted him as saying, referring to the European Parliament elections.

“The @EU_Commission should represent the interests of European farmers against those of Ukraine, not the other way around,” he quoted Orban as saying.

As he arrived at the summit, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said farmers’ grievances should be discussed.

“They offer products of high quality, we also need to make sure that they can get the right price for the high quality products that they provide,” he said.

Meanwhile, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar echoed French resident Emmanuel Macron’s opposition to signing a trade deal with the Mercosur group of South American countries in its current form – another key demand for farmers.

In France, where farmers stepped up protests at the start of the week, the impact of dozens of blockades is starting to be felt, said Eric Hemar, the head of a federation of transport and logistics employers.

“We did a poll among our federation members: all transport firms are impacted (by the farmers’ protest) and have lost over the past 10 days about 30% of their revenue, because we are not able to deliver on time or with delays,” he told franceinfo broadcaster.

 
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European Union leaders will try to persuade Hungary to unblock billions of dollars of EU aid for Ukraine at a crucial summit Thursday in Brussels – as Kyiv warns it is running low on ammunition to fight Russia’s invasion. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, Hungary is likely to demand hefty concessions in return.
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THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The United Nations’ top court on Wednesday rejected large parts of a case filed by Ukraine alleging that Russia bankrolled separatist rebels in the country’s east a decade ago and has discriminated against Crimea’s multiethnic community since its annexation of the peninsula. 

The International Court of Justice ruled Moscow violated articles of two treaties — one on terrorism financing and another on eradicating racial discrimination — but it rejected far more of Kyiv’s claims under the treaties. 

It rejected Ukraine’s request for Moscow to pay reparations for attacks in eastern Ukraine blamed on pro-Russia Ukrainian rebels, including the July 17, 2014, downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 that killed all 298 passengers and crew. 

Russia has denied any involvement in the downing of the jetliner. A Dutch domestic court convicted two Russians and a pro-Moscow Ukrainian in November 2022 for their roles in the attack and sentenced them in their absence to life imprisonment. The Netherlands and Ukraine also have sued Russia at the European Court of Human Rights over  Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. 

Court rules Russia violated order 

In another rebuke for Moscow, the world court ruled that Russia had violated one of the court’s orders by launching its full-scale invasion in Ukraine nearly two years ago. 

The leader of Ukraine’s legal team, Anton Korynevych, called the ruling “a really important day, because this is a judgment which says that the Russian Federation violated international law, in particular both conventions under which we made our application.” 

The legally binding final ruling was the first of two expected decisions from the ICJ linked to the decade-long conflict between Russia and Ukraine that exploded into all-out war almost two years ago. 

At hearings last year, a lawyer for Ukraine, David Zionts, said the pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine “attacked civilians as part of a campaign of intimidation and terror. Russian money and weapons fueled this campaign.” 

Another ruling expected Friday

The court, however, ruled that sending arms and other equipment didn’t constitute terrorism funding, according to the 1999 treaty. 

“The alleged supply of weapons to various armed groups operating in Ukraine and the alleged organization of training for members of those groups fall outside the material scope” of the treaty, said ICJ President Joan E. Donoghue. 

Another lawyer for Ukraine, Harold Koh, said during last year’s hearings that in the Crimean Peninsula, Russia “sought to replace the multiethnic community that had characterized Crimea before Russia’s intervention with discriminatory Russian nationalism.” 

Lawyers for Russia urged the world court to throw out the case, arguing that the actions of pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine did not amount to terrorism. 

The court found that Russia failed to investigate allegations by Ukraine of alleged terrorist acts but rejected all other claims by Kyiv of breaches of the Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. 

It also ruled that Moscow breached the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination by limiting school education in the Ukrainian language and by maintaining a ban on a Tartar representative assembly called the Mejlis. 

The court is scheduled to rule Friday on Russia’s objections to its jurisdiction in another case filed by Ukraine shortly after Russian troops invaded on February 24, 2022. It alleges Moscow launched its attack based on trumped-up genocide allegations. The court already has issued an interim order for Russia to halt the invasion, which Moscow has flouted. 

In recent weeks, the ICJ also heard a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Judges issued provisional measures last week calling on Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in the conflict. 
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