The Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is included in the UK`s withdrawal agreement from the EU, reaffirms that the Good Friday Agreement should be protected in all its parts. The two main political parties in the deal were the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), led by David Trimble, and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) led by John Hume. The two leaders together won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998. The other parties involved in a deal were Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party and the Progressive Unionist Party. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which later became the largest unionist party, did not support the deal. It left the talks when Sinn Féin and loyalist parties joined because republican and loyalist paramilitary weapons had not been downgraded. The result of these referendums was a large majority in both parts of Ireland in favour of the agreement. In the Republic, 56% of voters, 94% of the vote, voted in favour of revising the Constitution. In Northern Ireland, turnout was 81% and 71% of the vote was in favour of the agreement.
The previous text has only four articles; It is this short text that is the legal agreement, but it incorporates the last agreement into its timetables. [7] From a technical point of view, this draft agreement can be distinguished as a multi-party agreement, unlike the Belfast Agreement itself. [7] The Belfast Agreement is also referred to as the Good Friday Agreement, as it was concluded on Good Friday, 10 April 1998. It was an agreement between the British and Irish governments and most of Northern Ireland`s political parties on how to govern Northern Ireland. The discussions that led to the agreement focused on issues that have led to conflicts in recent decades. The aim was to create a new decentralised government for Northern Ireland, in which unionists and nationalists would share power. In 2004, negotiations were held between the two governments, the DUP and Sinn Féin, with a view to an agreement on institution-building. These talks failed, but a document released by governments detailing changes to the Belfast Agreement has been known as the “Global Agreement”.
However, on 26 September 2005, it was announced that the Commissional Irish Republican Army had completely closed and “decommissioned” its weapons arsenal. Yet many trade unionists, especially the DUP, remained skeptical. Of the loyalist paramilitaries, only the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) had taken weapons out of service. [21] Further negotiations took place in October 2006 and resulted in the St. Andrews Agreement. The overall result of these problems was to undermine unionists` confidence in the deal which was exploited by the anti-deal DUP, which eventually overtook the pro-deal Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in the 2003 general election. . .
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