N Ireland party leader pans Pelosi's warning on Brexit terms

LONDON (AP) — U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing criticism from the leader of Northern Ireland’s biggest unionist party after saying Congress won’t approve a trade deal with the U.K. if Britain scraps the agreement governing post-Brexit trade on the Irish island.

The trans-Atlantic sparring follows British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government announcing its intention to introduce legislation that would allow it to unilaterally suspend the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, an international agreement between Britain and the European Union.

Northen Ireland is the only part of the U.K. that shares a land border with an EU member country - the Republic of Ireland - and required special attention when the U.K. withdrew from the EU.

The protocol is designed to preserve the Northern Ireland peace process, but unionists complain it has created a trade barrier between the province and the rest of the U.K.

Pelosi said Thursday that Britain’s actions threatened to undermine the 1998 Good Friday Accords that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland. She called for “good-faith negotiations” to resolve any differences over the protocol.

“As I have stated in my conversations with the prime minister, the foreign secretary and members of the House of Commons, if the United Kingdom chooses to undermine the Good Friday Accords, the Congress cannot and will not support a bilateral free trade agreement with the United Kingdom,” Pelosi said.

Jeffrey Donaldson, a member of Parliament and leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, said the protocol itself is undermining the peace process because it threatens the key principles of the Good Friday Accords, also known as the Belfast Agreement.

The agreement created a power-sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland...