BELFAST, Jan 30, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Northern Ireland's main pro-UK party the

DUP said Tuesday that it endorses a deal with the UK government allowing it
to end a long-running boycott of the province's devolved government.

An internal party vote to back the deal at a closed-door meeting in Lisburn,
near Belfast, forms a basis to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly after
nearly two years, said Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Jeffrey
Donaldson.
 
"The result was clear, the DUP has been decisive, I have been mandated to
move forward," Donaldson told reporters around 1:00 am (GMT) following a
marathon five-hour meeting and vote.

But ending the DUP's veto on restoring the power-sharing executive at
Stormont is conditional on legislation being passed by the UK government and
a final agreement on a timetable, he said.

The details of the deal will be published soon, Donaldson said without giving
further information.

"I believe that the proposals will bring forward measures that are good for
Northern Ireland, and that will restore our place in the United Kingdom and
its internal market," he said.

UK Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said he was "pleased" that
the DUP had accepted that deal, and that London "will stick" to its terms.

"I now believe that all the conditions are in place for the Assembly to
return,... and I hope to be able to finalise this deal with the political
parties as soon as possible," he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

- 'Optimistic' -

If approved, the deal would allow the DUP and the nationalist pro-Irish Sinn
Fein to elect a speaker for the Assembly as early as next week.

Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill is expected to become first minister, the first
time a republican has held the post after her party overtook the DUP in the
last Assembly election in May 2022.

Mary Lou McDonald, leader of Sinn Fein, said in a statement she was
"optimistic... that we will see the northern institutions back up and running
before the February 8 deadline" set by London.

The DUP walked out of the executive in February 2022 in protest against post-
Brexit trade arrangements for the province called the "Windsor Framework".

That deal was brokered between the United Kingdom and the European Union to
address issues with a previous agreement, the Northern Ireland Protocol.
 
According to hardline unionists, the amended Windsor Framework rules don't go
far enough to protect Northern Ireland's status within the United Kingdom,
and keep the region partly under EU law and on a path toward Irish unity.

During protracted talks with London, the DUP sought to overhaul the rules,
including lessening the amount of checks on goods travelling between Northern
Ireland and the rest of the UK.

The Assembly's mothballing paralysed Northern Ireland's power-sharing
institutions and fuelled political uncertainty and industrial unrest in the
region, with public service provision crumbling as budgets were put in cold
storage.

Earlier this month, 16 public service worker unions coordinated a mass strike
over pay, the biggest industrial action seen in the British region for
decades.

London has offered the region a o3.3 billion ($4.2 billion) financial package
to solve public service pay disputes on condition that Stormont returns.