Clinton optimistic Northern Ireland govt will be revived

FORMER U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday he was optimistic that one of Northern Ireland’s main political parties would soon end a boycott that has kept the regional government on ice for more than a year.

Clinton said he had met with Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson on Monday, and “I left that meeting more optimistic than I entered it.”

Clinton is in Belfast this week to mark 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement ended decades of sectarian bloodshed. The deal established a Northern Ireland government with power shared between British unionist and Irish nationalist parties.

The DUP walked out more than a year ago to protest post-Brexit trade rules that imposed a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. It has refused to return, despite a deal reached by the U.K. and the EU in February to remove many of the border checks.

Clinton said the deal, known as the Windsor