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Queen makes historic peace trip to Ireland
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II meets students and staff at Trinity College Dublin, Tuesday May 17, 2011. The Queen set foot on Irish soil at the start of a historic state visit which will herald a new era in relations between Britain and the Republic. Politicians on both side of the Irish Sea have described the four-day event as momentous.
Associated Press
DUBLIN
Sometimes words aren’t necessary. That was the case Tuesday when Queen Elizabeth II put a wreath in Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance to honor the Irish rebels who lost their lives fighting for freedom — from Britain.
The queen became the first British monarch to set foot in Dublin for a century. Her four-day visit is designed to show that the bitter enmity of Ireland’s war of independence 90 years ago has been replaced by Anglo-Irish friendship, and that peace has become irreversible in the neighboring British territory of Northern Ireland.
But the event marked a successful first day of the queen’s groundbreaking four-day visit to Ireland, a trip aimed at demonstrating that the former foes have reconciled their differences amid strong ties of culture and immigration, common economic interests, and a joint desire to bury the painful past.
The queen had been invited to Ireland by President Mary McAleese, a Belfast-born Catholic who has spent 14 years lobbying the queen to make the journey in the name of peace.
Irish Army experts overnight defused one pipe bomb on a Dublin-bound bus that was detected in Maynooth, 15 miles 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.