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  • "
    IronLady2010 wrote:
    freefinker wrote:
    IronLady2010 wrote:
    Why, when this peace process is over, do they need to bring up such an event.

    We're at peace, let's not bring up old wounds.

    The Commander of the most awful IRA is happy, so let it be!
    .. because it's a highly significant event in the history of the Republican movement.

    Despite their ultimate aim of a united Ireland, this is another large step in rejecting violence on their part, whilst accepting the de facto political reality that they actually live in a monarchy that is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

    Surely, this is to be welcomed?
    But if we're all happy as we are, why open up the wound again.

    I very much welcome peace, but many will be offended by this honest gesture.
    .. despite the relative peace in Northern Ireland, 'the wounds' have not yet all been healed.

    That takes both time and positive gestures - and this is one such gesture."
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Queen to meet Martin McGuinness

4:19pm Friday 22nd June 2012 in News

Daily Echo: Martin McGuinness Martin McGuinness

THE Queen will meet Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness next week and shake hands in an historic first for the Northern Ireland peace process, it was confirmed today.

The Deputy First Minister will attend a cross border event in Belfast on Wednesday, which the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, will also attend.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said the decision had been taken by the party's ruling council at a four hour meeting in Dublin after consulting with grass roots support.

The Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister, a chief negotiator for Sinn Fein during tough talks to bring the IRA terror campaign to an end, turned down an invitation to meet the Queen during her visit to Ireland last year.

During that trip, the Queen won over many people by paying her respects to Ireland's patriot dead at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin, among many other significant engagements.

The meeting and handshake will be a particularly poignant moment for the Queen whose cousin Lord Louis Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA in 1979. Mr McGuinness is a former IRA commander.

Lord Mountbatten, whose country seat was at Broadlands in Romsey, was blown up by an IRA bomb while on a boat during a holiday in Ireland.

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