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Subscribe to RSSIn an act of unprecedented and powerful symbolism, Queen Elizabeth will shake hands with Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness next week. The historic handshake will, however, take place behind closed doors. ITN's royal correspondent Tim Ewart reports.
Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army commander, will meet with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II next week and shake hands in an historic first for the Northern Ireland peace process, the party has confirmed.
The Northern Ireland deputy first minister will attend a cross border event in Belfast on Wednesday, which the president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, will also attend.
Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said the decision had been taken after consulting with grass roots support and allowing the party's ruling council, the ard comhairle, to decide at a 4-hour meeting in Dublin.
“This will understandably cause difficulties for some republicans and nationalists,” Adams said. “Especially for those folks who suffered at the hands of British forces.”
WPA Pool via Getty Images file
Sinn Fein confirmed that Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness and First Minister Peter Robinson are to meet with Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Northern Ireland next week. They are shown here arriving for a meeting at 10 Downing Street on June 8, 2011 in London.
Adams, who, alongside McGuinness, helped end decades of sectarian violence and gave Catholics an equal voice in a power-sharing government with former Protestant foes, said, "This is a very significant initiative by us. We don't have to do it, we are doing it despite the fact that it will cause difficulties for some of our own folk but we think it's good for Ireland."
Sinn Féin stressed the meeting is not a celebration of the queen's Diamond Jubilee, although 86-year-old monarch will be in Northern Ireland at the time for jubilee events.
There has been speculation since the queen's momentous visit to Ireland in May last year that a senior Sinn Féin figure would meet her at an event.
Stefan Wermuth / Reuters
Britain's Queen Elizabeth smiles after her horse Estimate won The Queen's Vase on Friday, the fourth day at Royal Ascot, southwest of London.
McGuinness was always the candidate to shake the queen's hand but delicate talks have been going on for months to arrange a suitable venue and occasion.
The meeting is understood to be taking place in the Lyric Theatre in south Belfast and is sponsored by Co-operation Ireland, which works to bring divided communities together.
Since it was established in 1979, the charity has created opportunities for groups from the two main religious communities in Northern Ireland and from both sides of the border to learn about each other's traditions and cultures.
Adams said the party's decision was not unanimous but that a clear majority were in favor of the meeting. He also confirmed that McGuinness would "of course" shake hands with the queen.
The handshake will be viewed as another in a long list of dramatic advances in Anglo-Irish relations.
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The queen has never met a senior figure in the now-defunct IRA, which killed her cousin Lord Mountbatten in 1979, or its political wing Sinn Féin.
The IRA ended its 30-year armed campaign against British rule in 1998, but small splinter groups have continued to launch attacks against British targets, prompting security concerns that have prevented the queen from publicly announcing trips to the province ahead of her arrival.
The Tuesday and Wednesday visit was the first to be announced in advance since violence broke out in the 1960s and will see the queen and her husband, Philip, travel to Belfast and Enniskillen, scene of an IRA bombing that killed 11 people at a memorial service in 1987.
ITV is an international television partner of NBC News. This article also contains reporting by Reuters and Jim Gold, msnbc.com staff. Follow Gold on Facebook here.
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Leave a Comment:
God save the (Canadian) queen!
Much like a slave who long ago gained his freedom in battle, and has now agreed to shake the aged hand of his visiting (former) master, I think Belfast in deciding to do this, will demonstrate how a commoner can outclass a Queen.
I'm not a big Anglophile, and certainly not a royalist, but the story's focus on how "difficult" this may be for some Irish terrorists strikes me as typical American IRA pandering. The only reason the mess in Ireland lasted as long as it has in our time is stupid Americans sending money (via NORAD) to the IRA.
The Queen has always been a figurehead. She has never in her life ordered men into battle. She personally has done NOTHING to harm the Irish people. The IRA on the other hand murdered her beloved cousin in cold blood. He was retired. He was fishing for Pete's sake! And again, he had done nothing in a long and distinguished career (than included being a hero against the Nazis and getting England out of India) to harm the Irish.
Oh, that's right. Ireland and the IRA sided with the Nazis in WW2. Real class act there!
I'd say this shows a lot more forebearance on the part of Elizabeth than McGuinness.
Your analysis is funny. You recognize that the royals are figureheads but then blame the IRA for killing them. That is why figureheads exist, to give the angry masses someone to burn without truly damaging the state. In this way the de jure head of state can be disposed of while the de facto government remains unaffected.
The IRA has been fighting the British for 30 years...in other words, since 1968? Where do these writers get their information? In fact, the IRA was formed in 1916, during a little incident called the Easter Week uprising. Long before that, the Irish had rebelled against Queen Elizabeth the FIRST and then helped the Scottish Highlanders to fight on behalf of Bonnie Prince Charlie. A professional journalist should know THAT much about history, at least.
Oh, and Maj, some IRA men did fight on the Germans' side...most notably Brendan Behan, who tried to blow up a British troop ship. Since he was a teenager, his life was spared, so he lived to write Borstal Boy and The Hostage. He thus joined the ranks of the great Irish rebel writers, also including James Joyce and William Butler Yeats, which could be called the IRA's secret weapon...much more effective than Irish-American donations. But Ireland remained officially neutral through the war, although there were plenty of volunteers to fight Hitler.
So if Osama Ben Ladin had written a well-reviewed novel, that makes him OK Cassandra?
I think thousands of dead civilians in Ulster would disagree with the notion that Joyce and Yeats are the IRA's secret weapons. The IRA is a terrorist gang, not a book club! And American Irish donations to NORAD were used to buy weapons from Libya to arm that gang.
Perhaps your intention was to be ironic, but frankly your comment demonstrates a naive and sadly typical American view of these murderers. The Easter Uprising bears only the most superficial resemblance to the bloodbath the IRA renewed in 1968.
Blowing up a 79 year old retired war hero in his fishing boat is pointless, cowardly terrorism. That his 14 year old grandson and a 15 year old Irish boat boy were murdered along with him only adds to the senselessness of this despicable attack.
Again, it seems to me Elizabeth Windsor has a lot more skin in this handshake than Mr. McGuinness.
Cassandra:
You are in drastic need of some correction. After the Easter Rising in 1916, there followed two years of further bloodshed during the Irish Civil War. The Irish Civil War gave birth to the Provosionial Irish Republican Army as Michael Collins, aka the "Big Fella" was asked to go to england in order to seek the best terms from england. He did not. He was one of two factions of the Irish Repbulic-one for and one against-a treaty. The IRA was in response to the Black and Tans, aka the "Tans", a group of psychopathic numbskulls. The IRA of "The Troubles" does not completely owe its origin to the IRA of the early part of the twentieth century. In fact Ms. Cassandra the Provosional IRA was started in response to the heavy handed who rather quickly took sides with the prods. When the brits, especially the "SAS" first arrived in NI they were welcomed by the Catholics of the north but later sided with the prods.
I think you should make a visit to the local library and check out a book or two on Irish history.
Watch a very interesting video on You Tube.....search...... Britain in Bible Prophecy.
Dear Maj, you really need to get your facts straight, it was the English goverments financial support for hardline protestent terrorists that started the troubles and the IRA did not fully reform and declare war until 1972 after the Ballykinny and Bloody Sunday massacres. Point 2 the English Security forces killed a lot more unarmed civilian than the IRA. Point 3 it has been clearly established that most of the so called IRA bombings that killed a lot of civilians were carried out by MI5 and the RUC. Point 4 the IRA unlike the protestent terrorist groups are not linked to Islamist terrorist groups through the drugs trade. Point 5 English soldiers were sent to Northern Ireland to protect the Catholic civilians from protestant terrorists. Point 6 lets not forget the 300, 000 mostely IRA Irish volenteers who joined the English army to fight the Nazis unlike the Orange Order at that time who openly collaberated with the Nazis. Times and people change you obviously have not. Last point unser Brehan Law (Irish Constitution) you can only be a terrorist if you fight on irish soil on behalf of a foreign power or you invite a foreign power into Ireland to help you in your fight, and thats been the law since the 4th century.
Now to the article itself GO FOR IT SINN FEIN the troubles were about fighting for a free, fair and democratic Northern Ireland that aim in most part has been achieved and now it is time to sit down and ensure that the minority of right wing extremists never again highjack Northern Ireland and try to impose a ethnically pure protestant state.
Nausiating to think of shaking the hand of the devil, opressor, and the hack who aided in killing my fellow irish. Get out of Ireland, beg for forgivness and then maybe a handshake.
The english have been troubling the Irish for 900 years making Ireland the longest single occupied country in the world.Send the prods back to Scotland or england. Erin Go Bragh.