Obama lands in Ireland to start European tour
US President Barack Obama arrives in the Republic of Ireland at the start of a week-long tour of Europe.
After arriving in Dublin, President Obama will meet Irish President Mary McAleese and then hold talks with Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
Later the US leader, together with First Lady Michelle Obama, will visit the village of Moneygall, Co Offaly, which was the home of Falmouth kearnet, his great-great-great grandfather on his mother’s side.
Obama is expected to press US allies on the Middle East peace process, and will discuss American policy on the “Arab spring” uprisings during the tour.
The visit comes one day after Obama addressed Washington’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he said that 1967 borders between Israel and Palestine could only be acceptable with “mutually agreed land swaps”.
The president will go on to visit the UK, France and Poland. In France he will attend a meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) major world powers.
On Tuesday President Obama flies to London for a three-day state visit to the UK. Ahead of the visit a new joint security body set up by Britain and the United States is to be unveiled, it has been reported.
The National Security Strategy Board will be chaired by British national security adviser Peter Ricketts and his US counterpart, Tom Donilon, and is being established to help coordinate long-term foreign policy agendas.
“The new board will allow us to look ahead and develop a shared view of emerging challenges, how we should deal with them and how our current policy can adapt to longer-term developments,” an adviser to British leader David Cameron told The Times.
“It reflects a welcome further development of our close relationship on foreign and defence business,” he added.
Foreign Secretary William Hague maintained on Sunday that the “special relationship” between the two countries remained strong, despite suggestions in Britain that Obama was not as UK-friendly as some of his predecessors.
“It is very special. I think the longer a US administration is in power, the more they appreciate that,” he said.
“You can see that in government,” he added. “The co-operation that I see every day in intelligence matters is without parallel in the world.
“So is our nuclear co-operation. Our armed forces are working together with intimate closeness.”