Chinese president to visit Ireland

CHINESE President Hu Jintao will visit Ireland next year after accepting a renewed invitation from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Beijing yesterday.

Mr Ahern and a Government delegation, including ministers Micheál Martin, Mary Hanafin and Mary Coughlin, met Mr Hu and his officials at the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square.

They discussed Europe-China relations, including, it is understood, the likelihood that the EU will in the coming months lift its arms embargo on the communist state, which has been in place since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.