Biden touts dividends of peace in Belfast, even as tensions persist 04/12/2023

April 12, 2023
"The American people are with you, every step of the way."
President Biden says preserving peace in Northern Ireland is a priority for "Democrats and Republicans alike"
Belfast, Northern Ireland
CNN
—
When President Joe Biden spoke here Wednesday to mark a quarter-century of the Good Friday Agreement, it wasn’t from the seat of the Northern Ireland Assembly – currently suspended over a Brexit trade dispute – but from a new university campus downtown.

The choice of venue for Biden’s sole public event in Belfast was a symbolic one. While decades of violence between Nationalists and Unionists has been mostly left to another era, the peace is fragile and the politics are broken – making Biden’s speech to students as much about the future of this region as its bloody past.