According to The Guardian, US President Donald Trump, who is in Ireland, said that he would "love" to see a united Ireland and "it could happen now" during his visit to Dublin. As Reuters adds, these words were not well received either in London or by unionists in Northern Ireland.
Reuters reminds that the American president's words came a few weeks after the new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham declared that a referendum on Northern Ireland's withdrawal from the United Kingdom was "out of the question."
Well, I don't want to cause any problems, but let me tell you, I would love to see a reunification. "It will happen eventually... Of course the UK will have something to say about it... but I think it would be a fantastic thing," Trump told reporters, sitting next to Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin after their meeting in Dublin.
You know what? From my point of view, it will happen eventually. It might as well happen now. We're talking about it and you have the right man here to get it going, Trump added, turning to the prime minister.
Under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, a referendum on leaving the United Kingdom can only be held by decision of the British government. The agreement ended three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking to unite Ireland and unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.
Reuters emphasizes that although polls show that a clear majority in Northern Ireland favors remaining within the United Kingdom, this gap has narrowed slightly since Britain's exit from the European Union made the issue of unification a more important point of political debate.
Donald Trump also met with Irish President Catherine Connolly, elected head of state last year. When Trump visited Ireland as president in 2019, Connolly - a well-known far-left politician with outspoken views on foreign policy - protested at Shannon Airport in the west of the country.
Words, words, words
The US president, who is scheduled to take part in a golf tournament at one of his resorts today, also commented on other topics. Trump said the Gaza conflict was over after he "put out the fires," and when the US and Israel went to war in February, Iran was two weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
If they had it, they would blow up Israel, they would blow up the Middle East, said Donald Trump, adding that Europe would also be the target of the attack.
Trump also said that the crisis in the Middle East would "resolve great" and that he believed "the war with Iran would end after the US general elections" in November and that oil prices would fall as soon as that happened.
The American leader also said he could settle the Falklands dispute. He expressed doubt that Britain would be willing to travel such a long distance to defend the islands, and noted that he might be called upon to help resolve the dispute between Britain and Argentina.
According to The Guardian, these words were spoken when Argentine President Javier Milei stated that the "wind of change" was blowing in Argentina's favor, suggesting that Trump may reconsider the US position on sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
