Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Irish President Mary McAleese met in the British province of Northern Ireland Wednesday for talks that included preparations for what would be an historic visit of a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland, "I think the day is significantly closer," McAleese said after a 10-minute private meeting with the British monarch at Queen's University in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. There has been mounting speculation that the day of an announcement about a visit by the monarch to Dublin, Ireland's capital, was getting closer. It would be the first such visit by a reigning British monarch to the Irish Republic, which won limited independence from Britain in 1922 after a bitter struggle. McAleese, who has met the queen several times previously, but never before in Northern Ireland, said a visit by the monarch to Dublin would depend on "completion of devolution" in the British province, which now has a power-sharing government. Queen Elizabeth, who is accompanied on the trip by the Duke of Edinburgh, also met Northern Ireland's outgoing First Minister, Ian Paisley, and other dignitaries. The queen's three-day visit to Northern Ireland takes place amid tight security following police warnings last month that dissidents of the anti-British Republican movement were "going on the offensive" again.
