By Bo Erickson and Padraic Halpin
DUBLIN, Sept 12 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he would “love” to see Ireland unify with British-run Northern Ireland, remarks made during a visit to Dublin that will be unwelcome in London and among unionists in Northern Ireland.
Trump’s comments come weeks after new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said a referendum on Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom was “off the table”.
“Well, I don’t want to cause any problems, but I will tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” Trump told reporters sitting next to Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin after the pair met in Dublin. “It’s going to happen eventually … I think it would be a fantastic thing.”
“Now the UK will have something to say about it … but I think it would be a great thing,” he added.
Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a referendum on leaving the UK can be held only at the discretion of the British government. The accord ended three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland and unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK.
While polls show a comfortable majority in Northern Ireland favour remaining in the UK, the gap has narrowed slightly since Britain’s departure from the European Union pushed unity higher up the political agenda.
Trump is making the 48-hour trip as his Republican Party campaigns to retain its majorities in both chambers of the U.S. Congress. He is due to attend a golf tournament at one of his resorts later on Saturday.
Trump also met Irish President Catherine Connolly, who was elected head of state last year. When Trump last visited Ireland as president in 2019, Connolly, an outspoken politician with far-left foreign policy views, protested outside Shannon Airport in western Ireland.
Some supporters had urged her to speak out against U.S. military actions around the world and defend Ireland’s neutrality.
Anti-war and anti-Trump protests are planned in Dublin later on Saturday and in western Ireland near the Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg. One protester held a Palestine flag over a fence near the Irish president’s residence.
Ireland is one of the European Union’s most pro-Palestinian countries and in July passed a law restricting trade in goods with settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. U.S. lawmakers and the U.S. ambassador to Ireland criticised the law.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson, Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries in Dublin, Will James and Sam Tabahriti in London; Editing by Rod Nickel, Peter Graff and Mark Potter)
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