President hails handshake between Queen and McGuinness

The President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, has hailed plans for an historic handshake between the Queen of England and Martin McGuinness.

President Higgins will also attend the event where the long awaited encounter is set to take place in Belfast next Wednesday.

The charity Co-operation Ireland is hosting a celebration of culture on the island of Ireland in Belfast’s Lyric Theatre and the venue will provide the stage for the first meeting between Sinn Féin and the Queen.

President Higgins, who is visiting Irish communities in Britain, said: “I accepted the invitation on the basis that it would be an inclusive occasion.”

He said he hoped the meeting would help foster reconciliation in the North.

The historic handshake is expected to take place in private before the VIP guests join others at the event.

The meeting is being seen as a major milestone in efforts to normalise relations between nationalists and unionists.

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams confirmed yesterday that his party’s ruling executive had agreed to accept the invitation issued to Martin McGuinness, who shares the Office of First Minister and deputy First Minister at Stormont with unionist leader Peter Robinson.

Mr Adams said: “This will understandably cause difficulties for some republicans and nationalists, especially for those folks who suffered at the hands of British forces.”

But he added: “We’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do, despite the fact that it will cause difficulties for our own folk.

“But it’s good for Ireland. It’s good for this process we’re trying to develop. It’s the right time and the right reason.

“After Martin McGuinness completes this engagement he will be as true, as staunch, as active a republican as he ever was.”

The meeting will be the high point of a two-day Diamond Jubilee trip to the North by the Queen, who is also set to visit Enniskillen on Tuesday when her itinerary begins.

The handshake will be viewed as another in a long list of dramatic advances in Anglo-Irish relations.

One of the most significant was the Queen laying a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, which honours republicans who died fighting British rule, followed by a tour of the headquarters of the GAA, before she spoke Irish at a banquet in her honour.

Since those events, Mr McGuinness has spoken several times of how he was struck by the Queen’s gestures.

Mr Robinson had said republicans should pay due respect to the Queen as a recognition of her importance to many in the North.

The First Minister was among those who said such a meeting would also be difficult for the Queen, given that her own family was hurt by republican violence when the IRA killed Lord Mountbatten in a 1979 bombing in Co Sligo.

But the Democratic Unionist leader welcomed the planned meeting.

“The process has required us all to reach out and take decisions outside our comfort zone. It is the right decision and a step forward for Northern Ireland,” he said.

President Higgins said the plan to hold the meeting against the backdrop of a celebration of the arts was in keeping with a speech he gave in Derry shortly after becoming head of state where he highlighted the transformative power of culture.

The President, who took office after the Queen’s visit to the Republic of Ireland last year, said he could make a return state visit to Britain in 2013.