President Biden celebrating diplomacy, his ancestry on trip to Ireland

Belfast, The Gulf Observer: President Joe Biden embarked Tuesday on a journey of diplomatic and family celebration, highlighting the U.S. role of 25 years ago in ending deadly bloodshed in Northern Ireland while catching up with distant relatives in the Republic of Ireland. It’s his first trip back as America’s president.

Monday marked a quarter-century since the Good Friday Agreement, signed on that day in April 1998, ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland that killed 3,600 people. Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, is observing the milestone anniversary with a reunion of key players in the peace process along with Biden’s visit.

Deep divisions remain over the conflict’s legacy, and U.K. authorities in March raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland to “severe,” warning of IRA dissidents opposed to the peace process and set on attacks. Youths threw gasoline bombs and set a police vehicle on fire during a dissident march in Londonderry on Monday.

President Biden said last month that nothing would change his travel plans.

“They can’t keep me out,” he said.

The Democratic president embarked Tuesday on a four-day visit to both countries, including appearances in Belfast, the capital and largest city in Northern Ireland; in Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland; and in County Louth and County Mayo, on Ireland’s East and West coasts, respectively. He will also address Ireland’s Parliament.

Biden was to arrive in Belfast on Tuesday night. He will spend about half a day there on Wednesday, meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak before going to Ulster University to mark the Good Friday accord anniversary with other dignitaries and players in the peace process.

Afterward, Biden will travel to Dublin and then head to County Louth, where the 80-year-old will dive into the Irish ancestry of which he is immensely proud and speaks about often.

Biden will hold separate meetings Thursday in Dublin with Irish President Michael Higgins and Prime Minister Leo Varadkar before the address to Parliament and a dinner banquet. Varadkar visited Biden in the Oval Office last month on St. Patrick’s Day.

The president will spend Friday, the final day of the trip, in County Mayo, exploring family genealogy and giving a speech about ties between the U.S. and Ireland in front of a 19th century cathedral that the White House said was partly built using bricks supplied by his great-great-great-grandfather, Edward Blewitt, a brickmaker and civil engineer.

“The president is very much looking forward to that trip and to celebrating the deep historic ties that our two countries and our two people continue to share,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.

Ending decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, a period referred to as “the Troubles,” meant balancing competing identities in the country, which remained in the United Kingdom when the rest of Ireland won independence a century ago. Irish nationalists in the north — most of them Catholic — seek union with the Republic of Ireland, while largely Protestant unionists want to stay with the U.K.

The Good Friday Agreement, struck on April 10, 1998, after almost two years of U.S.-backed talks, committed armed groups to stop fighting, ended direct British rule and set up a Northern Ireland legislature and government with power shared between unionist and nationalist parties.

But Britain’s exit from the European Union, which left Northern Ireland poised uneasily between the rest of Britain and EU member Ireland, has upset a delicate political balance, including the power-sharing system set up by the peace accord.