The President, Mrs McAleese, has disclosed that she will join Queen Elizabeth in Messine, in Belgium, on November 11th to celebrate the opening of the joint British-Irish-funded memorial to the Irish dead of the second World War.
On the second day of her working visit to London - the first of her presidency - Mrs McAleese also confirmed that she would be meeting the Duke of Edinburgh in Dublin later in the year.
The President hailed both developments as a sign of the leadership being given in creating "fully grown, fully adult relationships between these two islands." Looking forward to the time when she would welcome Queen Elizabeth to Ireland, Mrs McAleese said: "I think the day that happens is a day we can all say, `Yes, we've arrived at a degree of comfort with each other that really does mark the closing of the culture of conflict . . .' More than the bottoming-out of the culture of conflict, it will mark the budding-in of the culture of consensus that we are building."
Asked when she might make her first State visit to Britain - and when Queen Elizabeth might make a reciprocal visit to the Republic - the President said: "I hope both of those will happen sooner rather than later. Certainly you can be sure we are all working assiduously to ensure that both those events will happen." Mrs McAleese said her meeting with Prince Philip would be at a joint committee for the President's Gaisce awards and the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme, which are working on a joint millennium project.
Mrs McAleese described her joint visit to Messine with Queen Elizabeth and the King of Belgium as of "crucial significance".
"The fact that the three of us will be there says something again about the state of maturity of relationships, political relationships, between our two countries."
The President continued: "It also says something about the way Ireland is growing in confidence and able to open and unpack aspects of our past that we were silent about, or unsure about. "In the past, regrettably, we tended to look in Ireland, certainly south of the Border, at the two world wars as British history. And there was a lack of acknowledgment of the involvement of Irish people, north, south, east and west, in those wars."
The President was talking to Irish journalists following her speech at the launch of the British-Irish Business Network at the Dorchester Hotel. After a series of meetings with representatives of London-based Irish organisations at the Irish Embassy, the President addressed the Foreign Press Association, giving her audience an enthusiastic vision of the opportunity for new beginnings presented by the Belfast Agreement.
She paid tribute to "the commitment and objectivity" shown by the international press in its coverage of Ireland, saying it had "made an important contribution to bringing about the peace settlement in Northern Ireland." The President said she was pleased by the Basque separatist ETA`s ceasefire decision, which mirrored the Northern Ireland ceasefire and the recognition that violence does not win.
