1998 peace deal in Belfast on Wednesday and highlight his “strong desire” to increase U.S. investment there in meetings with political leaders, a senior U.S. official said.
The brief Belfast stop comes against the backdrop of the latest political stalemate in which the devolved power-sharing government, a key part of the 1998 peace deal, has not met for more than a year due to a row about post-Brexit trade arrangements.Story continues below advertisement “His message is going to be the continued strong support for seeing the peace process move forward here,” U.S. National Security Council Senior Director for Europe Amanda Sloat told reporters ahead of a speech by Biden at a Belfast university.
That deal has so far failed to convince the region’s largest pro-British party, the Democratic Unionist Party , to end a boycott of the local assembly. Powersharing has endured multiple breakdowns and suspensions since 1998, including the assembly not sitting between 2017 and 2020 over a different row.