UK ready to be 'flexible' over backstop concerns

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON (AA) - The U.K. is prepared to be flexible over how to deal with concerns about the Northern Ireland backstop issue to strike a withdrawal agreement with the EU leaders, Britain’s foreign secretary said Tuesday.

Jeremy Hunt said the leaders in Europe were giving “positive signals” as the British government is trying to get concessions over a deal which was previously rejected by the parliament.

“The signals we are getting are reasonably positive. I don’t want to overstate them because I still think there is a lot of work to do but I think they do understand that we are being sincere,” Hunt told BBC.

“They are beginning to realize that we can get a majority in parliament because they are seeing the signals coming from the people who voted against the deal before who are saying, crucially, that they are prepared to be reasonable about how we get to that position that we can’t legally be trapped in the backstop,” he added.

Hunt’s remarks came on a day when Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay and Attorney General Geoffrey Cox are in Brussels to try to secure changes to the backstop clause in Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal.

Hunt said he hoped a no-deal Brexit “does not happen.”

“What I am working for, alongside all members of parliament, is to get that deal through and I think we can.”

He said: “I have always said whatever happens in negotiations, we are a strong country and will find a way to prosper. But no deal would cause huge disruption. No one in the cabinet wants no deal. What we want is a deal.”

The U.K. is set to leave the European Union on March 29, following a 2016 referendum that saw 52 percent of British voters opt to leave the bloc after more than 40 years of membership.

A “meaningful vote” will be held in the House of Commons next week with supposed “legally binding changes” to the previously rejected deal.