Story highlights First Minister Nicola Sturgeon: 'The mandate for a referendum is beyond question'

UK response: "We should be working together, not pulling apart"

(CNN) Scottish lawmakers voted 69-59 in favor of an independence referendum Tuesday, setting Edinburgh on a collision course with the UK government.

The vote by members of the Scottish Parliament gives the green light to First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to ask the UK Parliament for a referendum between autumn 2018 and spring 2019.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has indicated she will reject Sturgeon's timetable . Britain is expected to leave the European Union in 2019, and May has said that "now is not the time" for a vote that could break up the United Kingdom.

"Today's vote must now be respected," Sturgeon said afterward, according to Britain's Press Association.

"The mandate for a referendum is beyond question, and it would be democratically indefensible -- and utterly unsustainable -- to attempt to stand in the way of it."