During his trip to Belfast, Biden will mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which mostly ended 30 years of sectarian violence between pro-Ireland Catholics and pro-Britain Protestants. His trip will come a week before a host of top leaders – including Charles, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton – plan to be in Belfast for the official anniversary celebrations.
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After his stop in Belfast, Biden will travel to Ireland, a visit that is expected to be light on diplomatic engagements, to allow the president to bask in his ancestral homeland. Biden, whose family emigrated from Ireland, holds deep affection for the country. He regularly quotes Irish poetry, concedes he has an Irish temper and is quick to unspool his Irish lineage as a proud descendant of the Blewitts of County Mayo and the Finnegans of County Louth.
“As many of you know, I, like all of you, take pride in my Irish ancestry,” Biden said at the White House St Patrick’s Day celebration this year. “And as long as I can remember, it’s been sort of part of my soul.”
The White House has not yet formally announced Biden’s trip to Northern Ireland and Ireland, but officials have compared the Ireland portion of the trip to one he took in 2016, near the end of his tenure as vice president under Barack Obama. Biden, accompanied by his siblings, his daughter and some of his grandchildren, spent six days in Ireland, which included stops in his ancestral hometowns.
The White House expects to announce its official delegation for Charles’s coronation in the coming weeks. The delegation for Elizabeth’s coronation included Earl Warren, then the governor of California, and Omar Bradley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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American and British officials say that Biden and Charles have a good relationship, and note that Biden met with then-Prince Charles in November 2021, during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, where the president praised Charles’s commitment to tackling climate change.
Last month, Biden met with Sunak in San Diego on the sidelines of a joint event with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The three leaders announced a major new plan for the United States and Britain to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines to counter China’s growing influence in the region.
The Washington Post
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