UUP rejects devolution plan

THE Irish and British governments last night stuck by their plan for reviving devolution in the North despite the Ulster Unionists rejecting it at a party meeting.

Members of the UUP’s 110-member executive insisted after a meeting in Belfast that the two governments’ plan for implementing the Good Friday Agreement was not a “satisfactory basis” for political progress in the North.

They singled out for criticism plans for the scaling down of the Army presence in the North, a scheme enabling terror suspects who have been on-the-run since the troubles to return home without being jailed and the devolution of policing and justice powers.