British queen to address historic wounds on Ireland visit (AFP)

DUBLIN (AFP) – Queen Elizabeth II was to visit the site of a British massacre and make a keynote speech at Dublin Castle on Wednesday, addressing old wounds on her groundbreaking state visit to the Irish Republic.

The British sovereign was due to visit Croke Park stadium, the spiritual home of Gaelic sports, where 14 people were killed in a bloody reprisal attack in 1920.

She was also to make her only major speech of the four-day trip at a state banquet held in the former seat of British power on the Emerald Isle. The tone and content is likely to set the barometer for the state of Anglo-Irish relations.

While noting the vast improvement since peace was established in British-ruled Northern Ireland, the 85-year-old is expected to tackle the tensions that have meant no British monarch set foot here in a century before her watershed visit began Tuesday.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that while the trip was aimed at turning a new leaf, the hosts should not expect to hear apologies for Britain's colonial rule.

"We're not glossing over the past here," Hague told reporters at Dublin Castle.

"It is about recognising those events of the past, acknowledging those events but also showing how we can move on to the future.

"That is the right way to treat it rather than to think of it in terms of apologies."

In reality, the British monarch is not a political figure and Prime Minister David Cameron has already said sorry on behalf of the government for the Bloody Sunday killings in Londonderry in 1972.

However, the queen will visit the Croke Park, scene of the Bloody Sunday of 1920 -- a gesture that would have been unthinkable for most of her reign.

Wednesday's itinerary begins on a lighter note with a trip to the Guinness brewery.

One of Ireland's top tourist destinations, the site takes visitors through the brewing process behind one of the world-famous cultural symbols of Ireland -- a pint of the black stuff.

All cameras will be waiting for the monarch to raise a pint of stout.

The royal couple then visit Government Buildings, which houses Prime Minister Enda Kenny's offices and the Department of Finance. She will meet Kenny and Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore.

The most sensitive parts of the day begins with a visit to the Irish National War Memorial Garden, which is dedicated to the 49,400 Irish soldiers killed in World War I.

Many feel Ireland's war dead from the 1914-1918 conflict have too often been forgotten due to unease over them serving in British uniform while Ireland's independence struggle raged.

The queen and her husband Prince Philip then head to Croke Park, considered by many as a central symbol of Irish republicanism and independence from British rule.

Gilmore told AFP that the British monarch walking out on the pitch would be a "hugely symbolic" moment.

The visit to the 82,300-capacity venue, which will be closed to the public, was "part of the making of a statement about the past", he said, but would also acknowledge the key role that Gaelic games play in Irish life.

Kenny and Cameron were to hold talks before the state dinner. The banquet is the diplomatic high point of the trip.

Former Irish president Mary Robinson said there would be "significant disappointment" if the queen's speech sidestepped tough issues.

"I don't think it's appropriate for an apology but I think she could convey an understanding of the hurts that have been there and the difficult relationship," she told Britain's ITV television.

The first visit by a British monarch since independence in 1922 has required the biggest security operation in the Irish state's history.

Tuesday's first day saw Queen Elizabeth lay a wreath in honour of those who died fighting for Irish freedom from Britain in a landmark gesture. The monarch bowed her head in respect at the Garden of Remembrance and "God Save the Queen" was played in a historic moment.

But there were rowdy scenes outside where several hundred republican protesters, kept streets away, chanted and torched a British flag. Twenty-one people were arrested.

Later at Trinity College, the queen was applauded by students and staff as she visited the university, stopping to chat to well-wishers.

The 10,000-strong security force policing the visit was taking no chances amid an upsurge in violence by republican paramilitaries who oppose the Northern Ireland peace process.

A viable pipe bomb was defused outside Dublin amid a string of security alerts and a lockdown exclusion zone in in the city centre.

British queen makes historic peace trip to Ireland (AP)

DUBLIN – Undeterred by real or fake bombs, Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday began the first visit by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland, a four-day trip to highlight strong Anglo-Irish relations and the success of Northern Ireland peacemaking.

Resplendent in a cloak of emerald green and a dress of St. Patrick's blue, the 85-year-old queen stepped out from a bombproof, bulletproof Range Rover outside the official residence of Irish President Mary McAleese. Irish Army artillery units fired a 21-gun salute as a military brass band played "God Save the Queen."

The painstakingly choreographed visit has been designed to highlight today's exceptionally strong Anglo-Irish relations and the slow blooming of peace in neighboring Northern Ireland following a three-decade conflict that left 3,700 dead.

The queen arrived 100 years after her grandfather George V visited Dublin and an Ireland that was still part of the British Empire.

Beaming smiles by the queen and McAleese — a Belfast-born Catholic who has spent 14 years lobbying for Elizabeth II to visit — demonstrated genuine warmth between the two women, who have met several times before.

McAleese said Britain and Ireland were "determined to make the future a much, much better place." The queen didn't comment ahead of her planned speech Wednesday night at Dublin Castle, the former seat of British rule of Ireland.

Four fixed-wing propeller aircraft from Ireland's minuscule Air Corps flew overhead in tight formation as a white-gloved, gun-toting honor guard stood to attention.

Inside the president's residence, McAleese introduced the queen and husband Prince Philip to Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny. Outside, the queen introduced the president to British Foreign Minister William Hague. The two leaders then planted a tree as two children rang the residence's Peace Bell.

A 33-motorcycle police escort led the queen to McAleese's residence in Dublin's vast Phoenix Park through the unusually empty streets of Dublin — cleared to ensure no anti-British extremist could launch an attack. Nearby Dublin Zoo was closed as a security precaution and no civilian aircraft were permitted over Dublin for the day.

Irish Republican Army dissidents opposed to reconciliation with Britain still tried to undermine the visit with real and hoax bombs, but they caused no significant disruption.

Irish Army experts overnight defused one pipe bomb on a Dublin-bound bus that was detected in Maynooth, 15 miles (25 kilometers) west of the capital. Police said the bomb was properly constructed but not primed to detonate.

A second device abandoned near a light-rail station in west Dublin was deemed a hoax Tuesday morning. Later, police responded to at least two more reports of suspicious packages in working-class districts of north Dublin, but no further bombs were confirmed.

Police said IRA dissidents using a recognized codeword warned about the bus bomb, which was left in overhead luggage.

Several small IRA splinter groups concentrated along the Irish border continue to plot gun and bomb attacks in Northern Ireland in hopes of undermining the success of its 1998 peace accord, particularly its stable Catholic-Protestant government.

But Irish and British officials were keen to stress that the queen's visit to Dublin, Kildare, Tipperary and Cork would proceed as planned — accompanied by the biggest security operation in the Republic of Ireland's history.

"This is the start of an entirely new beginning for Ireland and Britain," Kenny said. "I really do hope that the welcome she gets will be genuine and memorable for her."

On her first day in Dublin, the queen was also visiting Trinity College — founded in 1592 by her royal namesake, Queen Elizabeth I — and laying a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance, a central Dublin memorial that honors two centuries of Ireland's rebel dead.

The latter gesture has been designed to symbolize Britain's reconciliation with Ireland 90 years after a brutal guerrilla war led to independence for the Catholic south of the island.

More than 8,000 police, two-thirds of the entire country's police force, shut down key roads in central Dublin and erected pedestrian barricades for several miles (kilometers). About 1,000 Irish troops were kept in reserve.

Police made it extremely difficult for protesters to get within sight of any of the queen's engagements. Onlookers were given few vantage points to see the queen unless they had been included in carefully vetted guest lists.

A few dozen supporters of an anti-British pressure group Eirigi — Gaelic for "rise" — scuffled with police on Dublin's major thoroughfare several hundred yards (meters) from the Garden of Remembrance. No serious injuries were reported as police successfully moved the protesters to a fenced-off area.

Britain and Ireland spent decades in frosty opposition following Ireland's 1919-21 war of independence and the creation in 1922 of the Irish Free State. Northern Ireland, created in 1921, remained in the United Kingdom.

Ireland stayed neutral in World War II and offered condolences to Germany over Adolf Hitler's death. It broke all symbolic ties with Britain by declaring itself a republic in 1949 and offered sympathy and a relatively safe haven when the modern IRA in 1970 began shooting and bombing in Northern Ireland.

But after Britain and Ireland joined the European Union in 1973, and as the bloodshed in Northern Ireland spilled over into the Catholic south, the governments in London and Dublin gradually found common cause.

Their cooperation provided the essential bedrock for Belfast's Good Friday peace accord in 1998. IRA disarmament and a coalition government of Northern Ireland's British Protestant majority and its Irish Catholic minority eventually followed.

While the Irish remain proud of their independence, many concede that they are closely linked culturally and economically to their much bigger neighbor.

Today's Ireland is home to 4.5 million residents who watch British television and read newspapers daily, and shop in the British chain stores that dominate Irish retail life.

Many follow English and Scottish soccer with passion while the English, in turn, have made the Emerald Isle a favored tourist destination.

Ireland's struggle to prevent a national bankruptcy — the Irish have spent three years raising taxes and cutting spending, and six months ago received a euro67.5 billion ($95 billion) credit line from international lenders — has found its greatest champion in Britain, its No. 1 trading partner.

Prime Minister David Cameron's government offered Ireland a particularly low-interest loan and is pressing other European Union members to give the Irish a cheaper deal, too.

UK queen lays wreath during historic Ireland visit (AFP)

DUBLIN (AFP) – A sombre Queen Elizabeth II laid a wreath on Tuesday at a memorial for the victims of Ireland's independence struggle in a landmark gesture on the first visit by a British monarch to the Irish republic.

The 85-year-old began her historic four-day trip surrounded by Ireland's biggest ever security operation as the discovery of a bomb near Dublin underscored the lingering threat from dissident republicans.

Wearing white, the queen appeared unperturbed as she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Irish President Mary McAleese during the wreath-laying ceremony at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin.

But the hushed atmosphere contrasted with the noisy scenes outside where several hundred republican protesters demonstrated against the queen's visit and burned a British flag.

She is the first British sovereign to visit Ireland since it won independence from Britain in 1922, while the last monarch to come to the country was King George V, the queen's grandfather, in 1911.

The neighbouring states have hailed the visit as a sign of the progress made in Anglo-Irish relations after the hard-won peace in British-ruled Northern Ireland following the 1998 Good Friday accord.

"I think it is an extraordinary moment in Irish history, a phenomenal sign and signal of the success of the peace process and absolutely the right moment for us to welcome (the queen) onto Irish soil," McAleese told RTE television.

A string of security alerts jangled nerves in Dublin, amid a recent rise in violence in Northern Ireland blamed on a dissident republicans who oppose the peace process and want the province to join the Republic.

Irish army bomb disposal experts defused a "viable explosive device" on a bus in Maynooth near Dublin overnight after a tip-off from an anonymous caller, officials said.

Around 30 passengers were reportedly evacuated from the bus, which was heading for the capital from western Ireland, after the pipe bomb was found in the luggage compartment.

There were at least seven false alarms including controlled explosions on suspicious packages found on Dublin's light railway system and in a Dublin park.

On Monday dissidents also made a coded bomb threat in London, the first outside Northern Ireland for 10 years.

But the queen appeared unperturbed by the security threats, dressed in the emerald green of her hosts and smiling broadly as she arrived with her husband Prince Philip at the Casement Aerodrome southwest of Dublin.

The military airfield is named after Roger Casement, an Irish nationalist executed for treason by the British in 1916.

The royal couple were then whisked through the specially cleared streets of the city with a 33-motorcycle escort to the official residence of McAleese, where they were greeted with a 21-gun salute.

Around 10,000 Irish security forces are being deployed at an estimated cost of 30 million euros ($42 million).

Police in high-visibility jackets manned cordons which closed off parts of central Dublin, while access to the queen's itinerary will be heavily restricted.

At the Garden of Remembrance -- one of the most sensitive moments of the trip -- she stood with head bowed during a minute's silence at the memorial for those who died fighting for Irish freedom. The army band played "God Save the Queen" along with the Irish national anthem.

Outside, protesters torched the flags of Britain and Northern Ireland. They carried banners from various groups, including Sinn Fein, the political wing of the now-defunct Irish Republican Army (IRA), and the hardline republican 32 County Sovereignty Movement.

At Trinity College, however, there were cheers when the royal couple arrived to view the Book of Kells, a ninth century gospel manuscript.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the queen's trip showed the strong ties with Ireland, which received a loan from London to stave off bankruptcy last year.

"I believe Her Majesty's visit will be the start of something big," said Cameron, who will also visit Ireland this week.

In a further gesture of reconciliation, the queen on Wednesday visits Croke Park stadium, where in 1920 British forces shot dead 14 people.