All the latest on four-day visit as ‘son of Ireland’ begins trip in Belfast before moving to Carlingford and Dundalk
The White House has been holding a press briefing in Belfast and Washington Correspondent Martin Wall was there:
Securing a free trade deal with the UK was a major ambition of Brexiters but leading US politicians ruled out any such agreement if there was any threat to the Good Friday Agreement. “I have no doubt that he perhaps shares certainly my disappointment, Sinn Féin’s disappointment that on this occasion marking 25 years of the peace accord, that the institutions aren’t up and running, that we still don’t have government in Belfast and that the DUP continues its boycott.
The DUP says Mr Biden’s visit – the first to the region by a US president in 10 years – will not pressure it to end its more than year-long protest at the trade rules that treat the North differently to the rest of the UK. Biden is also accompanied on this trip by his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who is a close political confidante of the president, and by son Hunter Biden, who has been perhaps less of a political asset in the past. Their presence underlies the extent to which exploring his Irish ancestral roots has guided a great deal of the itinerary in the Republic.
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