Northern Ireland’s DUP resists pressure to end govt boycott

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Leaders of the U.K., the European Union and two U.S. presidents have urged Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to restore the mothballed Belfast government and reap the reward of more economic investment. “It’s time to get this show on the road,” former U.S, President Bill Clinton said as part of the drumbeat. But Northern Ireland’s Unionist politicians have bristled at the message. They say the DUP won’t be bullied back into the government it walked out of last year to protest post-Brexit trade rules. The absence of a working government in Belfast has clouded the 25th anniversary commemorations for the 1998 Good Friday peace accord that ended three decades of sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland.