DUBLIN (Reuters) - Northern Ireland’s largest Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, on Friday said a British-Irish body created under a 1998 peace deal should be convened urgently after London moved to impose a budget on the region because its parties have failed to form a government.

“The two governments must act on their responsibilities as co-guarantors of the (1998) Good Friday Agreement which provides for a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference ... as a matter of urgency,” Sinn Fein’s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, said in a statement.

“There can be no return to direct rule,” she said.