US President Joe Biden has urged Northern Irish political leaders to restore their power-sharing government with the promise that scores of major US corporations are ready to invest in the region as he marked the 25th anniversary of peace in Belfast.
Mr Biden, who is fiercely proud of his Irish heritage, spent just over half a day in the UK region – where he met United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak – before travelling south to the Irish Republic for two-and-a-half days of speeches and meetings with officials and distant relatives.
The brief Belfast stop comes against the backdrop of the latest political stalemate in which the devolved power-sharing government, a key part of the 1998 peace deal, has not met for more than a year due to a row about post-Brexit trade arrangements.
“It took long hard years of work to get to this place,” Mr Biden said in a speech at the new Ulster University campus in Belfast, remarking how the city had been transformed since he first travelled there as a young senator.
“Today’s Belfast is the beating heart of Northern Ireland and is poised to drive unprecedented economic opportunity. There are scores of major American corporations wanting to come here wanting to invest.”
Mr Biden said power sharing remained critical to the future of Northern Ireland and that an effective devolved government would “draw even greater opportunity in this region”.
“So I hope the assembly and the executive will soon be restored. That’s a judgment for you to make, not me, but I hope it happens,” he told an audience that included the leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties.
Mr Sunak said he spoke to Mr Biden on Wednesday about “incredible economic opportunities” for Northern Ireland, and described both countries as “very close partners”.
The pair met over tea at the Belfast hotel Mr Biden stayed in overnight.
Mr Biden said the recent Windsor Framework deal between the EU and the UK to ease post-Brexit trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK offered the stability and predictability to encourage greater investment.
That deal has so far failed to convince the region’s largest pro-British party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), to end a boycott of the local assembly.
Power sharing has endured multiple breakdowns and suspensions since 1998, including the assembly not sitting between 2017 and 2020 over a different row.
One of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, former Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern, said it was a “huge pity” and a “big own goal” that the devolved assembly was not functioning to facilitate a presidential address.
Mr Biden will speak in the Irish parliament on Thursday.
The 1998 peace accord largely ended 30 years of bloodshed between mainly Catholic nationalist opponents and mainly Protestant unionist supporters of British rule.
The DUP has said Mr Biden’s visit – the first to the region by a US president in 10 years – will not convince it to end its protest at the trade rules that treat the province differently to the rest of the UK.
The DUP criticised some of Mr Biden’s interventions during the Brexit talks and one of its lawmakers, Sammy Wilson, described Mr Biden as “anti-British” on Wednesday in an interview with a British newspaper.
White House official Amanda Sloat said Mr Biden’s track record “shows that he’s not anti-British”.
-Reuters
