Unionist party refuses to form new N Ireland government

LONDON (AP) — Northern Ireland’s largest unionist party, which lost last week’s local elections, refused Monday to return to a power-sharing government saying it will not do so until its demands over post-Brexit customs arrangements are met.

Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson was among political leaders that met with Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis, who urged them to come together to resurrect a paralyzed Northern Irish government.

The talks came after nationalist party Sinn Fein, which seeks union with Ireland, scored a historic victory in last week's Northern Ireland Assembly elections. Sinn Fein overtook the rival DUP to become the first Irish nationalist party to top the voting in Northern Ireland’s history.

It was a milestone for a party long associated with the paramilitary Irish Republican Army, which sought to use violence to take Northern Ireland out of U.K. rule.

But while Sinn Fein now has the right to the position of Northern Ireland’s first minister, a functioning Executive cannot be formed unless the DUP, as the largest unionist party, agrees to take the role of deputy minister under the region’s mandatory power-sharing rules.

Donaldson said Monday he made clear to Lewis that the DUP will not nominate ministers to the Executive unless the U.K. government takes “decisive action” on new Brexit customs rules known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

“They gave a firm commitment to protect our place in the U.K. internal market. They have not done so, they have failed over the last two-an-a-half years to honor that commitment,” Donaldson said.

“We look to what the government is now going to say, but more fundamentally important is what the government is going to do,” he added.

The unionists are strongly opposed to new customs...