UK plans to trigger formal EU exit process in early 2017

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said talks were on with European 'friends and partners' on the issue

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Thursday that Britain was aiming to trigger Article 50, the formal process for leaving the European Union, early next year.

"We are talking to our European friends and partners in the expectation that by the early part of next year you will see an Article 50 letter. We will invoke that," he told Britain's Sky News television in New York.