BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Twenty-five years after the U.S. helped broker peace in Northern Ireland, President Joe Biden heads to Belfast on Tuesday to celebrate an accord that ended three decades of bloodshed and is widely considered a major diplomatic success.
Yet Biden's visit comes as the Good Friday Agreement, which the Clinton administration helped orchestrate, is being tested by political turmoil.
Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, has been without a government – as spelled out in the agreement – for more than a year amid a trade dispute following Brexit. The Northern Ireland Assembly isn't meeting. Executive Cabinet posts aren't filled.
And while the 1998 agreement largely ended sectarian violence, there are new reminders about the peace's fragility. Northern Ireland's terrorism threat level was recently raised to "severe" ahead of Biden's visit. Police disrupted a bomb plot targeted for Londonderry, Northern Ireland by members of the New IRA, a paramilitary group affiliated with the Irish Republican Army, according to The Belfast Telegraph.
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"For President Biden, this is a little bit of a tightrope to walk on: to emphasize, in broad terms, how the treaty has been successful, and perhaps maybe to ignore the fact that it's actually not working on the ground," said Christopher Maginn, professor of history at Fordham University, who specializes in Irish and British history.
A local resident walks past a loyalist paramilitary mural on April 4, 2023 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The Good Friday Agreement, signed on April 10, 1998, ended most of the violence during the decades-long conflict known as The TroublesHow Brexit disrupted Northern Ireland's government
Biden, a Catholic with well-documented Irish roots, is set to deliver remarks in Belfast on the agreement's 25th anniversary Wednesday before visiting his ancestral home of Ireland for the next three days. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will also attend the Belfast ceremony.
"President Biden cares deeply about Northern Ireland and has a long history of supporting peace and prosperity there," said White House spokesman John Kirby.
The Good Friday Agreement established a devolved local government in Northern Ireland with power shared among Protestant loyalist parties that pushed to remain part of the U.K. and Catholic nationalist parties that sought to unify with the Republic of Ireland.
President Joe Biden speaks during a St. Patrick's Day reception in the East Room of the White House, Friday, March 17, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
A power-sharing government can't function without both sides participating. And members of the Democratic Unionist Party – made up of conservatives who backed the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU – pulled out after Brexit.