Bomb threats ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit show that peace is “fragile” in post-Brexit Ireland, the UK’s Northern Ireland Secretary has said.
Chris Heaton-Harris, the Conservative government’s Northern Ireland Secretary has warned that a suspected bomb threat ahead of a visit by President Joe Biden on Tuesday shows the fragility of peace in post-Brexit Northern Ireland.
Biden is visiting the island for four days in order to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the deal that put to an end the regular terror campaigns in the island’s northern region.
However, ahead of the visit, UK law enforcement agencies on the island are now concerned that dissident terrorists are planning bombings to distract from Biden, as well as to draw attention to their cause.
Writing in The Telegraph on Monday, Heaton-Harris emphasised the importance of the Good Friday Agreement — which ended a long-running conflict between pro-Ireland Catholics and Pro-UK Protestants in the region — before warning that a recent uptick of tension risks bringing Northern Ireland back to the days of regular terror attacks.
“[A]s recent events have demonstrated that a small number of people who want to drag us all back to the dark old days still exist. Recent dissident republican attacks are a stark reminder of this,” he said.
“It’s a stark reminder of the fragility of peace,” he continued. “The peace provided by the Agreement must never be taken for granted, it marked the beginning of a journey; a journey to strive to build the best, most prosperous Northern Ireland its people deserve.”
Reference to a potential return to violence comes amid claims made by UK security services that dissident Irish-republican terrorists — specifically the so-called “New IRA” — aim to launch attacks on police in the hopes of disrupting the Biden visit.
As reported police in the region claim to have uncovered evidence that the terror group is planning on launching bomb and gun attacks on police deployed on Monday.
“[T]here may be attempts to draw police into serious public disorder and to use that then as a platform to launch terrorist attacks,” Assistant Chief Constable Bobby Singleton of the Police Service of Northern Ireland said, adding that the service was “prepared for that”.
Meanwhile, authorities in the UK appear to be keen to use the Biden visit to the region to push for a re-establishment of the devolved Northern Ireland parliament in Stormont.
Set up under the Good Friday Agreement, the assembly failed to reconvene after 2022, leaving the region largely under the direct control of Westminster.
This is largely due to the refusal of some UK Unionists to take their seats in the parliament, with the politicians arguing that partial EU control of the region post-Brexit risks creating a rift between it and the rest of the UK.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has attempted to solve this issue with his new Windsor Framework deal with the European Union, though this rework has so far failed to get ever-more-cagey politicians of the region on side.
Many of these representatives now fear a growing push for Northern Ireland to leave the UK entirely and reunify with the rest of Ireland, which has now been independent for slightly more than 100 years.