LONDON, April 6 — Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said today he will attend a state banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth II in a move that would once have been unthinkable for the former IRA commander.
McGuinness hailed the queen’s “leadership” role in the Northern Ireland peace process, which ended decades of conflict between largely Catholic republicans and protestant Unionists in the British province.
He will accept an invitation from the queen to attend the banquet at Windsor Castle being thrown for the state visit of Irish President Michael D. Higgins, the first time the republic’s head of state has made such a trip.
“I think she played a leadership role and is playing a leadership role in the whole context of the need for reconciliation,” McGuinness said.
The republican Sinn Fein party gave him the approval to dine with the queen following a leadership meeting, McGuinness said.
“All of the information that I have received was that this was something that she wanted to do, that this wasn’t something that she was told to do by the (British) government,” he said.
The move will be seen as a landmark in the peace process in Northern Ireland, which remains part of the United Kingdom.
Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny welcomed the decision, saying that people had to “move on and not be blocked by the past”.
McGuinness, a former Irish Republican Army paramilitary commander, snubbed a banquet in Dublin during the queen’s historic state visit to the Republic of Ireland in 2011.
He has also refused to sit in the British parliament, despite having been elected as a legislator, because it would have meant swearing an oath of allegiance to the queen.
The sovereign’s highly-charged visit was the first by a British monarch since her grandfather king George V in 1911, before the republic won independence from Britain in 1922.
It helped to heal deep-rooted unease and put Anglo-Irish relations on a new footing, with the visit by Higgins set to consolidate the process
Higgins’ four-day state visit begins on Tuesday.
“While Martin McGuinness’ involvement in President Higgins’s state visit may not be welcome by opponents of change, it is yet another example of Sinn Fein’s commitment to an inclusive future based on tolerance and equality,” party president Gerry Adams said in a statement Saturday.
“This decision may cause difficulty for some Irish republicans in light of ongoing difficulties in the north (of Ireland) but I would appeal to them to view this positively in the context of republican and democratic objectives and the interests of unity and peace on this island.”
Queen Elizabeth met McGuinness when she visited a Belfast theatre in June 2012. They shook hands behind closed doors, and then again before the cameras as the sovereign left the building.
McGuinness held the monarch’s hand for a few moments and she smiled as he spoke to her in Irish, telling her the words meant: “Goodbye and God speed.”
McGuinness was a senior commander in the IRA when the paramilitary group killed Louis Mountbatten, the queen’s second cousin once removed, in 1979 by bombing his boat while he was on holiday in County Sligo in the Republic of Ireland.
McGuinness’s Catholic socialist Sinn Fein party, the political wing of the now-defunct IRA, wants Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join the Republic of Ireland to the south.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “There is a long-standing practice of not commenting on individual invitations. That said, Her Majesty is greatly looking forward to this historic state visit and welcoming all guests to Windsor Castle.” — AFP
