Belfast, 12 April 2023 (dpa/MIA) – US President Joe Biden arrived in Belfast on Tuesday evening to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement at the start of a visit to Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Biden was welcomed by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as he landed in the Northern Irish capital.

The US president, who is of Irish descent, plans to address a gathering of students at Ulster University in Belfast on Wednesday afternoon.

Meetings were also planned with leaders of major Northern Ireland parties, according to the White House.

The priority of his visit is to "make sure the Irish accords and the Windsor agreement stay in place, to keep the peace," Biden said shortly before his departure. "It looks like we're going to - keep your fingers crossed."

A focus of the visit is to mark the anniversary of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended the conflict between the largely Protestant supporters of continued union with Britain and the largely Catholic backers of a united Ireland.

Despite the agreement, the region is struggling with tensions.

On the eve of Biden's visit Molotov cocktails were thrown on police cars as riots broke out in the Northern Irish city of Derry/Londonderry.

Police later found several pipe bombs in the city.

The province is also suffering from political paralysis as the main pro-British Protestant party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has boycotted the regional parliament over the Northern Ireland protocol, the new agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom on post-Brexit trading rules.

The DUP's boycott means the regional parliament has been unable to meet and Northern Ireland has been without a regional government since elections in May 2022.

Photo: MIA archive