US president Joe Biden has expressed hope that the North’s powersharing government will be restored as he hailed the “astounding” peace brought by the Belfast Agreement.
In a speech delivered at the new Ulster University building in Belfast on Wednesday, Mr Biden marked the 25th anniversary of the landmark deal that ended the Troubles, saying it had “literally shifted the political gravity in our world”.
He highlighted the “incredible economic opportunity” created through “sustained peace” that was “just beginning”.
During the carefully worded address, Mr Biden insisted however that the return of Stormont was a decision that rested with the North’s politicians.
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He praised the political unity shown after the shooting of a senior police officer in Omagh two months ago.
“A government that works to find ways through hard problems together is going to draw even greater opportunity in this region. So I hope the Assembly and the Executive will soon be restored,” he said.
“That’s a judgment for you to make not me, but I hope it happens, along with the institutions that facilitate north-south and east-west relations, all of which are vital pieces of the Good Friday Agreement.”
The North has had no functioning government for more than a year due to the DUP’s refusal to join the Executive over its ongoing opposition to post-Brexit trading arrangements.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson welcomed the presidential visit but said “it doesn’t change the political dynamic in Northern Ireland”.
“We believe the government needs to go further in terms of protecting Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom and our ability to trade within the UK internal market and that’s what needs to happen now to enable us to move towards the restoration of the political institutions,” he said.
He joined the leaders of the North’s other four main political parties for a brief meeting with Mr Biden shortly before his university speech, which was his only public engagement in the North during the four-day visit to Ireland.
Sinn Féin deputy leader and First Minister designate Michelle O’Neill said Mr Biden’s address sent a “clear message to the DUP” that the peace of the past 25 years is “something to be celebrated”.
“But he was very much future focused, he was looking forward to the next 25 years, it was about the hope and the opportunity, but I think his message was clear, we need peace, we need stability and we need prosperity, those things all go hand in hand,” she said.
Before the event, a senior US official hit back at comments made by former DUP leader Arlene Foster, who accused Mr Biden of being “pro republican”, and claimed he “hates the United Kingdom”.
“”I think the track record of the President shows that he is not anti-British,” Amanda Sloat, a senior director for Europe at the US national security council, said.
Mr Biden first visited the city more than 30 years ago before the 1994 ceasefires when he was a US senator.
Addressing an audience of political and civic leaders, students and staff in the glass-fronted city centre building close to the Cathedral Quarter, he said the “dividends of peace are all around us” and “I would argue, inspiration”.
“When I was here in ‘91 you couldn’t have had a glass building in this neighbourhood. But things are changing.”
He added: “I think sometimes, especially with the distance of history, we forget how hard-earned, how astounding that peace was ...”
Mr Biden pledged the preservation of the Belfast Agreement was a “priority for Democrats and Republicans alike in the United States”.
Meanwhile, the White House said on Wednesday that the president was “very happy with everything that Ireland has been doing”.
Mr Biden’s talks with the Taoiseach on Thursday are likely to centre on the war in Ukraine.
Issues relating to military neutrality were “decisions for the Irish people”, a White House official said.
