N. Ireland parties ease crisis that threatened power-sharing

Northern Ireland’s biggest political parties appear set to agree on a new government after ending a standoff that threatened to scuttle the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing administration

LONDON -- Northern Ireland’s biggest political parties appear set to agree on a new government Thursday after ending a standoff that threatened to scuttle the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing administration. The pro-British Democratic Unionist Party has picked Northern Ireland Assembly member Paul Givan as its choice of first minister. But the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein had threatened not to fill the post of deputy because of a feud about protections for the Irish language. That would have mothballed the administration — under the power-sharing arrangements set up as part of Northern Ireland’s peace accord, a government can’t be formed unless both roles are filled. The language issue cuts to the heart of tensions between Northern Ireland’s mostly Catholic nationalists, who see themselves as Irish, and Protestants, who largely identify as British.