Feuding Northern Irish leaders agree to work together

By Anne Cadwallader

BELFAST (Reuters) - Leaders of Northern Ireland's provincial government ended months of deadlock on Tuesday and agreed to resume working together after they reached an understanding over policing and justice powers.

A powersharing pact between Northern Ireland's political foes last year cemented a 1998 peace deal ending 30 years of bloodshed in which more than 3,600 people were killed.

But the executive has not met since mid-June due to tensions between the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and its nationalist partner Sinn Fein, which had aimed to secure a timetable for the transfer of policing and justice powers to Belfast from London.

The DUP has concerns about a locally controlled police force and the continued existence of Sinn Fein's ally the Irish Republican Army (IRA) despite an independent watchdog saying the guerrilla group, which fought to end British rule in the north and unite Ireland, no longer posed a threat to peace.

The DUP and Sinn Fein said they had agreed a timetable for devolution of police powers and appointing an attorney general as well as an independent commission for judicial appointments.

"We are both agreed that policing and justice functions should be devolved," Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein told a joint news conference.

"Every leading politician in our community is committed to this outcome," McGuinness, a former IRA commander, said, adding that the executive would hold its first meeting on Thursday.

DUP leader and First Minister Peter Robinson said the agreement reached was a "a very satisfactory resolution" of the most difficult issues relating to transferring power.