Biden in N. Ireland but crisis remains

BELFAST — US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he hoped Northern Ireland's devolved power-sharing government could be restored soon, but few expect him to resolve a political crisis that has put Northern Ireland's government on ice.

"I believe (the) democratic institutions (that) established the Good Friday Agreement remain critical to the future of Northern Ireland," Biden said in a speech at Ulster University.

Biden arrived in Belfast on Tuesday evening to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Northern Ireland peace deal. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak greeted Biden as he landed on Tuesday and the pair were scheduled to meet again on Wednesday.

Biden, who has spoken in the past of his Irish roots, also met the leaders of the five main political parties in Northern Ireland's power-sharing Parliament, which was created through the Good Friday Agreement and is in mothballs.

According to The Associated Press, Biden was not scheduled to visit Stormont, the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It has been suspended since the Democratic Unionist Party, which formed half of a power-sharing government, walked out a year ago over a post-Brexit trade dispute.

Britain's departure from the European Union left Northern Ireland poised uneasily between the rest of the United Kingdom and EU member Ireland, and put the peace deal under increased strain.

Michelle O'Neill, vice-president of Sinn Fein, the party with the most lawmakers in the devolved power-sharing Parliament, said the Good Friday Agreement remains something to be celebrated.

Biden said on Tuesday the priority for his trip — which includes three days in his ancestral homeland, the Republic of Ireland — was "to keep the peace" in Northern Ireland and help unlock its political paralysis.

But senior figures in the Democratic Unionist Party, who are under pressure to resume local power-sharing, remain skeptical.

Sammy Wilson, a DUP member of the UK parliament in Westminster, branded Biden "anti-British" and accused the United States' second Catholic president of having "made his antipathy toward Protestants in particular very well known".

Another DUP lawmaker, Nigel Dodds, suggested any mediation efforts would prove futile. "Pressure from an American administration, which is so transparently pro-nationalist, constitutes no pressure on us at all," he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

On Tuesday, police found four suspected pipe bombs in a cemetery in Londonderry, near where youths threw gasoline bombs and set a police vehicle on fire on Easter Monday.

Amanda Sloat, senior director for Europe at the US National Security Council, told reporters Biden invited Sunak to visit Washington in June.

Agencies and Earle Gale in London contributed to this story.