US president Joe Biden believes the people of Northern Ireland deserve to have a democratically-elected, powersharing representative government, the White House has said.
At a briefing on Wednesday the senior director for Europe at the US national security council Amanda Sloat said the president came to Northern Ireland “very much as a friend” and as a supporter of the peace process.
She denied strongly an assertion by former DUP leader Arlene Foster that Mr Biden “hates the UK”.
Ms Sloat said such as claim was “simply untrue”.
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“The fact that the president is going to be engaging for the third time in three months, and then again next month, and then again in June, with the prime minister of the UK shows how close our co-operation is with the UK.”
“And before that the president had numerous calls and meetings with [former] prime minister [Boris] Johnson and [former] prime minister [Liz] Truss as well.”
“President Biden obviously is a very proud Irish American, he is proud of those Irish roots. But he is also a strong supporter of our bilateral partnership with the UK and not only on a bilateral basis, within Nato, within the G7 on the UN Security Council.
“And like I said, we truly are working in lockstep with the British government on all of the pressing global challenges that our countries are facing.”
The politics of Biden's visit
Ms Sloat said the purpose of the president’s visit to Belfast was to mark the Good Friday Agreement, to continue to reaffirm the support of the United States for peace and prosperity and to underscore the readiness of the United States to engage in further economic investment.
“Obviously the president like I think everybody in Northern Ireland, the prime minister, the Taoiseach and the rest would like to see the devolved institutions back up and running. The president made that point in his remarks on St Patrick’s Day. But really the main purpose of his visit here today is to mark the anniversary.”
