President Joe Biden will travel to the UK and Ireland this week, a visit the White House confirmed on Wednesday.
The president will first travel to Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, before traveling to Ireland, where he will “discuss our close cooperation on the full range of shared global challenges,” the White House said.
“He will also have several engagements, including in Dublin, County Louth and County Mayo, where he will deliver a speech celebrating the deep and historic ties that unite our countries and peoples,” the White House said in a statement.
Biden said in early March that he intended to visit Northern Ireland to mark the upcoming anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which the United States helped broker a quarter-century ago to end decades of sectarian violence.
A presidential visit to Northern Ireland to mark the anniversary of the historic agreement was long the subject of speculation. The last US President to visit Belfast was Barack Obama in 2013.
The Irish government said on Wednesday that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar “looks forward to the upcoming official visit of the President of the United States to Ireland.”