Bush announces Dublin summit plans
US President George W Bush used a St Patrick’s Day ceremony in Washington to announce he will go to Ireland in June for a summit with the European Union.
Mr Bush and his wife, Laura, were presented with a bowl of shamrocks by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
Ireland assumed the EU presidency on January 1 and Mr Ahern is hosting the summit in Dublin.
A five-strong delegation from the anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party attended yesterday’s White House ceremony and, afterwards, party spokesman Jeffrey Donaldson said he believed Mr Bush’s call for an end to paramilitarism would have proved uncomfortable for Sinn Féin.
Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble, meanwhile, said Mr Bush’s speech was the best he had ever heard. He said it showed that the US government was fully behind his demand for the disbandment of the IRA.
Mr Trimble also said that he was confidence Mr Bush would continue to push for an end to paramilitarism.
St Patrick’s Day has always been a happy one for Americans, Mr Bush said. “Some places, Americans get a little too happy,” he joked.
Mr Bush said the US-EU meeting in late June would ”strengthen the essential partnership” between Washington and Europe. Those bonds have been strained by sharp differences over the US-led war in Iraq.
Mr Bush and Mr Ahern expressed unity in the fight against terrorism and they remembered the more than 200 victims of last week’s bombings in Madrid.
The President said he and Mr Ahern shared a common vision for a lasting peace for the people of Northern Ireland “free of terror and intimidation”.
“I call for a permanent end to all political violence,” the President said. “There is no place for paramilitaries in a democratic society.”
Mr Ahern said the ceremony was a reminder of “the close and abiding friendship that has existed between our two nations for so many centuries. The United States has been a stalwart supporter of Ireland, in good times and in bad”.
He added: “Europe and the United States share a common determination to overcome the evils of terrorism.
“Last week we witnessed the wilful destruction of human life in Madrid. Many were reminded of the horrors of 9/11. Terrorism is an affront to our democracies. … We are determined to ensure that our people are protected from this despicable scourge.”
The EU is holding high-level security talks tomorrow in Brussels to assess additional anti-terrorism measures, which Mr Ahern said are even more crucial in light of the Madrid bombings.
“There is an imperative on all of us to work on security issues and to try to cooperate on those,” he said.
The two also discussed the Israeli-Palestinian dispute ”in some considerable detail” as well as Iran, Syria, North Korea and Iraq, theTaoiseach said.
Mr Ahern pressed Mr Bush on Europe’s insistence that the UN be given more responsibility for the political situation in Iraq – and said he received agreement from the President that Washington shares that view.
