Historic Visit for Paisley, McGuinness

Irish Voice News

Historic Visit for Paisley, McGuinness

November 15, 2007

By April Drew

NORTHERN Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness will visit the U.S. from December 3-7 in an effort to strengthen U.S. support for the power sharing Northern Executive and persuade American business leaders that Northern Ireland is a good investment.

On their first overseas visit together, Paisley and McGuinness will meet President George W. Bush in the White House on the Washington leg of their journey. They will also travel to New York.

An integral part of their trip will be to share with major U.S. investors the positives of investing in Northern Ireland, and to invite them to an investment conference in Belfast in May 2008. It is also believed the pair will ring the trading bell at the New York Stock Exchange during their visit.

This week the North’s Economy Minister Nigel Dodds is visiting East Coast ahead of the December visit. McGuinness was recently in the U.S. as part of a drive to attract U.S. chief executives to Belfast.

Sinn Fein senior U.S. representative Rite O’Hare told the Irish Voice on Tuesday that the visit would be a good physical demonstration of the fact that consensus politics are working.

“The visit is of great importance, not least to acknowledge the role that Irish America in particular has played in getting the peace process to this point of joint power sharing and government,” O’Hare said.

“The validation of that for people in America who supported the peace process through pretty hard times is hugely important.”

Tony Silberfeld of the Northern Ireland Bureau told the Irish Voice on Tuesday that the tentative dates for the visit are December 3-7. “The plan to date is that they will be in New York from December 3-5 and Washington on the sixth and seventh,” Silberfeld said.

Although no plans are close to being finalized — “We should know the full schedule late next week,” Silberfeld added — an event is being planned by the Friends of Ireland on Capitol Hill on Thursday, December 6.

“There might also be a visit to the Senate at some point that day but nothing is confirmed yet,” Silberfeld said.

It is also believed that a visit to the White House to meet President Bush will also be on the agenda. It is known that Paisley was holding out for such a visit before he would confirm the U.S. trip.

As for the New York program, Silberfeld said it’s still wide open but several requests have been made from various organizations to host the leaders.

Tom Moran, chairman and CEO of Mutual of America and a leading Irish American proponent of the peace process, sees the December visit as another positive step in the process.

“Any time we see the first minister and deputy first minister working together like they have been is just one more positive sign for the future of Northern Ireland,” said Moran, who was deeply involved in the American role in the peace process and looks forward to the visit from the ministers.

Former Congressman Bruce Morrison, who was also a member of the Irish American peace delegation, also expressed his approval over the upcoming visit.

“The best news with respect to Northern Ireland since last May has been that things that were once thought impossible have become normal, and the professional cooperation between the first minister and the deputy first minister reflected in this visit is just that kind of normalcy that people in Northern Ireland have longed for in decades,” he told the Irish Voice.

Paisley and McGuinness have defied the skeptics who believed their joint roles in running Northern Ireland would never succeed. Indeed, the two men have become known as the “Chuckle Brothers” because they appear to be so much at ease in each other’s company.

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