LONDON (UK) – US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden warned there would be no US-UK trade deal unless Britain honours the Northern Ireland peace treaty as it finally leaves the European bloc.
“We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit,” he said on Twitter.
“Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced a legislation that flouts certain parts of the Brexit divorce agreement concerning Northern Ireland and blamed Brussels for “putting a revolver on the table in trade talks”.
Johnson said Britain has to have the capability to break parts of the 2020 Brexit pact inked to uphold London’s commitments under the 1998 peace deal which finally brought to an and the bloody conflict between Irish Catholic nationalists and pro-British Protestant unionists.
Biden, who is proud of his Irish heritage, retweeted a letter from Eliot Engel, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, to the British PM urging Johnson to honour the Good Friday pact.