BELFAST: Northern Ireland’s quibbling political parties gathered in Belfast on Wednesday for one last shot at forming a power-sharing government after a year of fruitless wrangling.

Britain’s new Northern Ireland Secretary Karen Bradley, in post since Jan.8, met separately with the five main parties in the province alongside Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney.

Further one-on-one talks are planned in the coming days before the possibility of any round-table negotiations involving all sides, according to officials.

Both Bradley and Coveney have declared “time is short” to restart devolved administration in the north of the island.

Bradley said on Thursday “one last opportunity to reach agreement remains,” scheduling the “short, intense” burst of talks before pledging to update Britain’s parliament by Feb.7.

The new minister added she believed agreement is possible, but previous rounds of exhaustive talks have floundered, with several deadlines having come and gone.

The two largest parties, the pro-British Democratic Unionists (DUP) and Irish republicans Sinn Fein, remain at loggerheads over several crucial issues.

But DUP lawmaker Gregory Campbell told reporters on Wednesday his party was ready to govern “immediately.”

“We’re prepared to go into government today with no red lines, no pre-conditions,” he said.

In the absence of an executive, the British province has been run by civil servants over the past 12 months.

Failure to make “rapid progress” will mean the British government will set a budget for the new financial year, while fresh elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly − last held in May 2016 and March 2017 − would also be considered.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said Tuesday that progess had been made in talks at the end of last year.

“What we hope to achieve now is to get all the parties back around the table and hope to build on that progress and get the devolved administration up and running as quickly as possible,” he added.

As the largest parties from each side of Northern Ireland’s cultural divide, the Protestant, conservative DUP and Catholic leftists Sinn Fein are supposed to govern together under a power-sharing accord reached in 1998 to end three decades of violent conflict.