Joe Biden, the most Irish of American presidentswill land in Belfast this Tuesday to celebrate 25 years of the Good Friday Agreement, which restored peace to Northern Ireland after the civil war between Catholics and Protestants which left 3,200 dead.
He will use his strength and identity to meet the leaders of five major political parties during his visit to Belfast.
He will try to get them to accept and reopen the Belfast Assemblywhich is closed due to the differences generated by Brexit and its border with Europe, as did the then president Bill Clinton in the difficult negotiations of Easter Vios Friday.
The Assembly was one of the great successes of the Peace Accord to achieve reconciliation in the province.
Looking for the opening of Stormont
Biden organized a joint meeting in a valiant attempt to help break the impasse that held Stormont, without a functioning government for more than a year.
Biden is expected to meet the leaders of five Northern Irish parties: the Democratic Unionist Party, Sinn Fein, the Ulster Unionist Party, the Social Democratic and Labor Party and the Alliance Party.
Biden had previously lobbied Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his predecessors for a new Brexit deal, which could once again pave the way for power-sharing.
Stormont, also known as the Northern Ireland Assembly, was created by the Good Friday Agreement to be administered through power sharingbetween a nationalist and a unionist party.
However, the DUP (Protestant Unionists) has refused to participate since it withdrew from power sharing in February last year. They maintained the boycott after the Stormont election last May where Sinn Fein won the most seats. It was first joined by a nationalist, republican and Catholic party in Northern Ireland.
Brexit problems
Sunak hoped that his Brexit deal, amending the Northern Ireland Protocol arrangements, would be enough to convince the DUP to return to power sharing. But the DUP declined to back up the call. windsor frame.
Discussions with the parties will take place before Biden addresses the University of Ulster in a speech in Belfast, which is expected to hail the Good Friday Agreement and discuss how best to preserve the peace today.
He will be speaking on a campus, which is like a symbol of the unity needed in Northern Ireland at the moment. The £350m campus is the largest investment in central Belfast since 1998.
“It has 23,000 square meters of glass in front of it and you don’t have to use your imagination to look back 25 or 30 years, before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast) to know that we weren’t going to see many buildings made of glass in that moment,” said Professor Bartholomew.
Then, in Belfast, the bombs were intermittent. The famous Europa hotel, symbol of the city, lived on permanent alert for fear that another bomb will explode in his bar or in the room.
violence returns
Political violence threatened to overshadow Joe Biden’s arrival when dissident republicans of the New IRA bombed a police van in Derry on Monday. They were celebrating the Easter Rising against the British in 1916. The Secret Service had been expecting an attack “on Easter Monday”.
‘Loyalist’ Protestant activist Jamie Bryson received death threats of the “Real UFF”, a recycled unit of Protestants radicalized in the civil war, the Fighters for a free Ulster.
“Today my family and I received death threats from a criminal gang calling themselves the Real UFF. I will never be intimidated by a disorganized group of drug dealers, calling themselves Real UFF,” he tweeted. “They are gangsters, who will not bully or threaten a true loyalist,” she wrote.
The Real IRA and the Real UFF they are the new faces of violence in Northern Ireland, since Brexit was signed, and the province has been left without supplies due to regulations agreed by Johnson.
A White House spokesman thanked the work of local security services. He said the US president was “more than comfortable” during the trip, despite the violence. It is this climate that the US president is trying to dispel.
Meeting with Rishi Sunak
Biden will arrive in Northern Ireland on Tuesday night, where British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will meet him on the plane. He will hold talks Wednesday, before Biden delivers a speech.
Then the president of the United States. will travel to irelandwhere it has ancestral ties, for other events marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and the advancement of peace.
Before his trip, he gave the clearest indication that he will run for re-election in November 2024, telling the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, “I plan to run … But we’re not ready to announce that yet.”
A White House spokesman said on Monday that Biden will mark “tremendous progress” since the Good Friday deal and emphasize the need to “preserve those gains” throughout his journey.
It’s already underway the largest police operation in the province in a decade, with parades during Holy Week followed by world leaders, who come to commemorate the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
A very Irish American
When Joseph Robinette Biden Junior lands on Irish soil, he will be the eighth sitting US president to visit Ireland.
Descendant of emigrants from Mayo and Louth in the era of the Irish famineBiden’s visit will cover a mix of political and personal events, marking the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement, the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement and its ancestral roots.
Your four day visit begins with your arrival in Northern Ireland. But it will include official engagements in Dublin and personal events in Louth and Mayo, culminating in a public address in Ballina on Friday evening.
The agenda
Biden will arrive in Belfast on Air Force One, taking off from Joint Base Andrews, on his transatlantic flight. You will stay in a hotel in central Belfast.
The only public engagement of Biden’s short stop in Belfast will be a public address at the University of Ulster, where it will mark the formal opening of the Belfast University campus.
He will be joined by Northern political leaders and representatives of youth, business and civic communities.
Biden is expected to make his visit’s political remarks on the achievement of the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the dividends from the deal, which ended nearly three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland. Ulster has been reborn economically and socially, with huge American economic, educational and political investments.
All eyes will be on Biden and what he says about the Windsor Framework, the EU-UK deal aimed at breaking the stalemate over the Northern Brexit deal, which failed to win unionist support and was sponsored by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Carlos III.
Following the University of Ulster speech, Biden and his team will head south to Dublin Airport before moving north again to County Louth, where he will visit Carlingford Castle. Over thereyou will hear about his great-great grandfather Owen Finnegan, who left for the United States in 1840.
Walks are planned in Carlingford and Dundalk before returning to Dublin, where you will stay in a hotel in the city centre.
Thursday will be the day of official commitments in the Republic. will meet President Michael D. Higgins81 years old, in Áras an Uachtaráin in Phoenix Park.
Here, you will probably ring the peace bell and will plant a tree, as have previous visiting dignitaries. An appearance by the Irish president’s two Bernese mountain dogs, Bród and Misneach, is likely, given that Biden is also a dog owner and lover.
in search of roots
In the afternoon, Biden will become the fourth US president to address the Oireachtas, following John F. Kennedy in 1963, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1995. Later Thursday, Biden will attend a banquet at Dublin Castle.
Before you leave, go back to your roots. On Friday, Biden will head to another ancestral county, Mayo, and fly to Ireland West Airport, as the airport near Knock is officially known.
Biden he is the second Catholic after being elected to the White House (after JFK), then you may want to visit the Knock Shrine before heading to Ballina.
This was the home of Biden’s great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt, who emigrated to the United States in 1850 at the height of the famine in Ireland and settled in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. There will be a lot of ancestry and genealogy talks at the May stop.
In Dundalk, another symbol
Martin McElligott was a bystander when President Bill Clinton addressed thousands in Dundalk Market Square, the border city in 2000, in a speech that moved everyone. This time he is at the center of the city’s preparation for Biden’s arrival.
“In the 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement and the 23 years since President Bill Clinton came to town, a lot has changed. Dundalk has become the city it was always meant to be,” he said.
At Kilwirra Cemetery, where Biden’s ancestors, the Finnegans, are buried, there was a heavy security presence on Monday. A short distance away, in the village of Carlingford, there was also a significant security presence with gardaí (Irish Police) and Secret Service around the city and King John’s Castle.
Here comes George Mitchell, the father of peace
Former US Senator and key figure in the Good Friday Agreement negotiations, George Mitchell, is expected to visit Belfast next week, despite receiving leukemia treatment.
The former US special envoy to Northern Ireland (89) will participate in events scheduled by Queen’s University from Monday to Wednesday 17-19 April.
Queen’s University is getting organised various acts to commemorate the anniversary of the peace accord and in 2016 launched the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, in honor of the famed peace negotiator.
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Source: Clarin
Mary Ortiz is a seasoned journalist with a passion for world events. As a writer for News Rebeat, she brings a fresh perspective to the latest global happenings and provides in-depth coverage that offers a deeper understanding of the world around us.