By Steve Holland
BELFAST (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden is not anti-British and his pride in his Irish roots does not preclude him from playing a supportive role in Northern Ireland's peace process, a White House official said on Wednesday.
Biden, who is fiercely proud of his Irish heritage, arrived in Belfast late on Tuesday and will spend just over half a day in the province of the United Kingdom before he travels south to the Irish Republic for two-and-a-half days of meetings with officials and distant relatives.
His first trip to Northern Ireland as president comes at a delicate time, as it celebrates the 25th anniversary of its peace deal but with the devolved powersharing government - a key part of that agreement - in a state of collapse.
"The track record of the president shows that he's not anti- British," Amanda Sloat, U.S. National Security Council Senior Director for Europe, told reporters in Belfast.
"President Biden obviously is a very proud Irish American. He is proud of those Irish roots. But he is also a strong supporter of our bilateral partnership with the UK."
Sloat was responding to comments from Sammy Wilson, a lawmaker from the Northern Ireland's largest pro-British party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who told a newspaper on Wednesday that Biden was "anti-British".
Former DUP leader and ex-Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster also told the GB News channel on Tuesday that there was no doubt that Biden "hates the United Kingdom".
BREXIT IMPASSE
The DUP have become one of the main focuses of the trip due to its more than year-long boycott of the devolved government due to post-Brexit trade rules that treat the province differently to the rest of the UK.
Its leaders, along with leaders of the other four main political parties in the province, were due to meet Biden on Wednesday morning, with the DUP saying they will not be pressured into changing their stance by the visit of a U.S. president.
Biden said on Tuesday that his priority was to help "keep the peace" as Northern Ireland marks the anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that largely ended 30 years of bloodshed between mainly Catholic opponents and mainly Protestant supporters of British rule.
Ties between the two communities - and between London and Washington - have since been strained by Britain's departure from the European Union and its need to secure a divorce deal that did not damage the fundamentals of the peace deal.
Britain's relationship with the United States - built on close defence, intelligence, economic and cultural ties - has long been known as the "special relationship" but a failure to agree a free trade deal after Brexit has disappointed some British politicians.