Global General

Queen lands in Ireland to celebrate peace

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-17 20:07

Britain's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip disembark from an aircraft as they arrive at Baldonnel Aerodrome near Dublin May 17, 2011. Britain's Queen Elizabeth arrived in Ireland on Tuesday for a four day state visit, the first by a British monarch since Ireland's independence. [Photo/Agencies]

DUBLIN - Queen Elizabeth II has begun the first visit by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland, a four-day trip designed to highlight strong Anglo-Irish relations and the blooming of peace in neighboring Northern Ireland.

The 85-year-old queen, resplendent in an emerald suit and hat and accompanied by husband Prince Philip, was greeted on arrival Tuesday by an Irish Army honor guard at a military airstrip outside Dublin. A local girl, 8-year-old Rachel Fox, presented the queen with a floral bouquet.

The queen boarded a bombproof, bulletproof Range Rover to have lunch with Irish President Mary McAleese, who had lobbied for 14 years for the queen to visit. A 33-motorcycle police escort led the way through the unusually empty streets of Dublin - cleared to ensure no anti-British extremist could launch an attack.

Hours beforehand, Irish Republican Army dissidents opposed to compromise with Britain tried to undermine the visit with real and hoax bombs.

Irish Army experts defused one pipe bomb on a Dublin-bound bus overnight. A second device abandoned near a light-rail station in west Dublin was deemed a hoax Tuesday morning.

No group claimed responsibility for either threat. But several small IRA splinter groups concentrated along the Irish border continue to plot gun and bomb attacks in the British territory of Northern Ireland in hopes of undermining the success of its 1998 peace accord, particularly its stable Catholic-Protestant government.

Irish and British officials were keen to stress that the queen's four-day visit to Dublin, Kildare, Tipperary and Cork would proceed as planned - accompanied by the biggest security operation in the Republic of Ireland's history.

"This is the start of an entirely new beginning for Ireland and Britain," said Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny. "I really do hope that the welcome she gets will be genuine and memorable for her and her party."

On her first day in Dublin, the queen is visiting Trinity College - founded in 1592 by her royal namesake, Queen Elizabeth I - and laying a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance, a central Dublin memorial that honors two centuries of Ireland's rebel dead.

The latter gesture has been designed to symbolize Britain's reconciliation with Ireland 90 years after a brutal guerrilla war led to independence for the Catholic south of the island.

More than 8,000 police, two-thirds of the entire country's police force, shut down key roads in central Dublin and erected pedestrian barricades for several miles (kilometers). About 1,000 Irish troops were being kept in reserve as potential reinforcements.

Ireland received both the queen's specially armored Range Rover and two massive mobile water cannons from the Northern Ireland police.