DUP success threatens peace process

IAN PAISLEY’S Democratic Unionists last night surged to the top of the North’s election poll to threaten the future of the Good Friday Agreement.

The party’s 178,000 first preference votes hardened opposition to British Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair’s plans to restore a power-sharing executive in Belfast.

With Sinn Féin hammering Mark Durkan’s SDLP, the next Stormont Assembly will have a majority of unionists opposed to the 1998 peace accord.