Limited progress made in Northern Ireland political talks - Sinn Fein

BELFAST (Reuters) - Limited progress has been made by Northern Irish politicians ahead of a 1500 GMT deadline to restore the province's power-sharing government, Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein said on Thursday. Britain's Northern Ireland minister said earlier on Thursday that a number of issues remained outstanding between the two sides and called for a solution "as soon as possible", without explicitly extending the deadline. "There has been some limited progress in closing those gaps. We have been met with an anti-equality and anti-rights agenda, we are trying to get past that, but we're not there yet," Sinn Fein regional assembly member Conor Murphy told reporters. (Reporting by Amanda Ferguson, writing by Padraic Halpin, editing by Ed Osmond)