The American President, Joe Biden continues his three-day visit to the Republic of Ireland this Thursday to meet with the president and prime minister of the country, Michael D. Higgins and Leo Varadkar, respectively, as well as for an expected intervention in the national Parliament.
The meeting at the official residence of Aras an Uachtarain with Higgins, who holds a mainly representative position, has a great symbolic content since both plan to plant some trees together and ring the so-called “peace bell”installed in 2008 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Good Friday agreement.
That historic pact, which put an end to the conflict on the island of Ireland, will be the central point of the speech that Biden will deliver in the afternoon in the Irish Parliament, meeting in joint session, where he will praise the cooperation between Ireland and the United States to advance democracy , peace, security and prosperity, advanced the White House.
The Democratic president will thus become the fourth US president to address both houses in Dublinafter John Fistgerald Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Before, Biden plans to meet with the Irish Prime Minister, the Christian Democrat Leo Varadkar, whom he already received at the White House in March during Saint Patrick’s Day, the patron saint of Ireland.
Both leaders will talk about their bilateral relationsthe legacy of the Good Friday agreement 25 years after its signing (April 10, 1998) and the current political crisis in Northern Ireland, where the power-sharing government between nationalists and unionists has been suspended for a year due to their differences about Brexit.
The day will conclude with a gala dinner at Dublin Castle.
The US president will return to the United States on Saturday morningbut before closing the visit on Friday in County Mayo (northwest), in the small town of Ballina, where part of his maternal family also comes from.
Biden will deliver a speech at Ballina Cathedral to celebrate the strong ties the United States and Ireland have.
With information from Efe.
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Source: La Opinion
