After the bombs in Derry, Joe Biden lands in Northern Ireland. The President of the United States will arrive in Belfast this evening at 21:30 (22:30 Italian time). British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will meet you at the airport.
The US President will be on the Emerald Isle for four days. The occasion is the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which in 1998 ended clashes between Catholic-Republicans determined to reunify Northern Ireland in Dublin and staunch Protestant-Unionists in London. Clashes that broke out again on Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers shot into the crowd at a demonstration in Derry and opened a season of violence that left 1,600 dead. A wound in history that someone tried to reopen on Easter Monday by throwing Molotov cocktails and burning police cars during a demonstration in Derry.
However, the new tensions did not change Biden’s program, which tonight in Belfast will be accommodated in a hotel in the historic center, protected by three hundred police. Tomorrow morning he will attend the ‘Agreement 25’ conference at the University of Ulster and inaugurate the new campus. Afterwards, he will meet with local authorities and representatives of business associations. According to British newspapers, the announcement of new American investments in Northern Ireland is expected. And also UK Prime Minister Sunak is expected in turn to announce interventions to support the economy in Ulster.
In the afternoon, Biden will leave for Dublin to meet with the President of the Republic of Ireland, Michael Higgins. He will then attend a gala evening at Dublin Castle.
The head of the White House will meet Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Thursday and then deliver a speech to the Oireachtas, as Ireland’s independent parliament is called in Gaelic. Deputies from the Dáil, the lower house, and the Seanad, the senate, will meet in joint session. Joe Biden will thus become the fourth US president to address the Oireachtas, after John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1995.
On April 14, the US President will visit his ancestral lands, Louth and Mayo counties. With the famine of 1848, Biden’s maternal great-grandfather emigrated to America. In those years, a million people left Ireland to escape famine. So much so that today it is estimated that one in ten Americans have roots in the Emerald Isle. In Ballina, Joe Biden will give a public speech outside Saint Muredach cathedral and return to the United States in the evening.
No meeting with King Charles III is planned during the trip. Biden will not even attend the coronation of the new monarch on May 6 in London. No explanation was given for the absence. Representing the White House will be his wife, Jill Biden. The US president was, in turn, present at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, on September 19, also in London.
Source: IL Tempo

John Cameron is a journalist at The Nation View specializing in world news and current events, particularly in international politics and diplomacy. With expertise in international relations, he covers a range of topics including conflicts, politics and economic trends.