The UK's Northern Ireland secretary, Julian Smith has imposed a 13 January deadline for the parties to reach an agreement (Credit: AP)
Irish nationalists and their pro-British unionist rivals have begun talks on restoring the devolved Stormont government, almost three years after power sharing collapsed in acrimony.
The parties most linked to Northern Ireland's sectarian past suffered at the polls in last week's general election. Both the loyalist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the nationalist Sinn Fein lost voters, partly due to the collapse of the devolved government.
Benefiting from the political stalemate, the moderate-nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the non-aligned Alliance Party, both had an uptick in their share of votes.
The UK's Northern Ireland secretary, Julian Smith, has begun meeting the leaders of Northern Ireland's biggest five parties, with the aim of restoring the assembly before a January deadline.
DUP leader Arlene Foster, left, with MPs Jeffrey Donaldson and Emma Little-Pengelly at the party's annual conference (Credit: AP)
The DUP lost two seats in the 12 December election. Following her meeting with Smith, Arlene Foster, the DUP's leader, recognized people wanted "to get Stormont back up and running again," signaling that a government could be formed by the beginning of 2020.
Despite doing well in Belfast constituencies, Sinn Fein's overall support fell by 6.7 percent, with the party losing a seat in Londonderry. The nationalist party had pulled out of the previous Stormont government, after Foster refused to take responsibility for a scandal in which hundreds of millions of pounds was wasted in a renewable energy incentive scheme.
Several attempts at talks, aimed at the assembly's restoration, have ended in failure.
Sinn Fein leaders have been protesting against a hard border with Ireland after the UK voted to leave the EU in a 2016 referendum (Credit: AP)
The importance of the assembly has increased in its absence, after a provision in UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit agreement gave it the right every four years to consider whether to maintain alignment with EU market rules.
Failure to reach a deal by 13 January would trigger assembly elections. If that failed to break the deadlock, the British government could then impose direct rule – a move that would infuriate the nationalists and threaten the ongoing peace process.
If an agreement can be reached, a new Stormont government will have to deal with the fallout of Johnson's Brexit deal, which is likely to be ratified by the new British parliament. While Johnson said during his victory speech that Brexit would mean the UK is "leaving the EU as one United Kingdom," his deal could expose long-standing divisions in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK to have a land border with the EU, exposing it to the economic and political risks of increased customs checks. Any return of visible checks and a physical border could be a threat to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which helped bring an end to three decades of conflict.