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.

Britain's Queen honors Irish nationalists (Reuters)

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth honored Irish people killed fighting for independence from Britain on Tuesday in a powerful gesture of reconciliation few people would have believed possible even in recent times.

The queen laid a wreath at Dublin's Garden of Remembrance, Ireland's monument to its fallen heroes, before a hushed crowd of dignitaries, soldiers and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, whose uncle was killed by militant Irish nationalists in 1979.

The visit, the first by a British monarch since Ireland won independence from London in 1921, is designed to show how warm neighborly relations have replaced centuries of animosity although security was tight after a homemade bomb was found.

The British national anthem 'God Save the Queen' rang out in one of Ireland's most sacred national shrines as representatives of Protestant paramilitary groups, which once targeted Catholics in a bitter conflict for control of Northern Ireland, watched on from among the hand-picked crowd.

Most Irish people have welcomed the visit although the streets were eerily empty of the usual cheering crowds that greet the queen elsewhere because of security fears.

"My mother would have loved to have lived to see this day," said Alex Wrafter, an unemployed 67-year whose mother moved from London to just south of the Northern Irish border in 1939.

"I don't think she would ever have believed it but I think it's extraordinarily important. The past needs to be put where it belongs."

A 1998 deal ending Irish nationalists' guerrilla war against British rule of Northern Ireland paved the way for the sojourn but threats from militant republican groups opposed to the peace process have kept the city on edge.

A makeshift bomb was found in a bus headed for Dublin late on Monday. It was destroyed in a controlled explosion by the army in Maynooth, 25 km (15 miles) from Dublin, after a telephone warning to police.

"They are dragging us into the dark ages," said Tom O'Neill, a 34-year-old salesman. "There are some people in Ireland that have to get over the whole English thing."

PROTESTS

The queen's visit has prompted Ireland's largest-ever security operation. Snipers took up positions around the Garden of Remembrance and some 4,000 police officers, backed by 2,000 soldiers, patrolled the capital.

Around 200 protesters threw bricks, bottles and fireworks at police and were pushed back with riot shields and batons. A hardcore of about 50 stayed on after the queen left the monument chanting "Brits out" and hurling missiles.

In a second demonstration close to the Garden of Remembrance, protestors brandished placards with "Britain Out of Ireland" and "Irish Blood on English Hands" written on them and chanted anti-British slogans.

"It's a disgrace that we are welcoming the commander in chief of the British forces to Dublin," said Sean Keogh, a member of the 32-County Sovereignty Movement, which wants Britain to withdraw from the six counties of Northern Ireland.

"She's clearly not welcome here. Where are the crowds? Where are all the people waving union jacks?"

Anglo-Irish conflict goes back centuries, marked by a bitter history of settlement by British Protestants in the mainly Catholic country. But generations of Irish emigration has created a strong bond between the two countries.

Most Irish people are impressed at the length and scope of the queen's visit and are hoping it puts the country, still reeling from its banking crisis, in a more positive light.

Though the monarch's visit is about reconciliation there are constant reminders of the violent past.

Her arrival coincided with the 37th anniversary of bombings in Dublin and Monaghan, the single bloodiest day in the three-decade long Northern Ireland conflict.

Over 200 people gathered at the site of one of the bombings in Dublin to lay flowers and remember the 33 people killed.

INTEREST

While Irish people consider themselves proud republicans there is a generally gossipy interest in the British royal family as evidenced by the deserted streets during the televised April 29 wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton.

Kathleen Hannon, 60, and her sister Jean Caulderbanks, 64, were hoping to get a glimpse of the queen in her black Range Rover as she whizzed through a locked-down Dublin.

"We have grown up watching the family," said Hannon, under a statue of Irish writer James Joyce as hundreds of police milled around nearby O'Connell Street, Dublin's main thoroughfare.

"We've been to Buckingham Palace and we went to see where Lady Diana was buried. We're not even Protestants," she said. "We just love to see how the other half live."

(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft in London, Conor Humphries in Dublin and Ian Graham in Belfast; Writing by Carmel Crimmins; Editing by Jodie Ginsberg and Elizabeth Fullerton)