» Queen Elizabeth and ex-IRA leader share historic handshake

Queen Elizabeth and ex-IRA leader share historic handshake

Posted on 6/28/2012 by

For decades, McGuinness was an avowed enemy of the British Empire — a representative of a paramilitary group that in 1979 killed the queen’s beloved cousin Louis Mountbatten with a bomb planted on his fishing boat.

Potent symbolism

But in a potent sign of just how far the peace process in Northern Ireland has come, the queen and McGuinness, now deputy first minister in Northern Ireland’s provincial government, exchanged pleasantries at a meeting in Belfast that would have been difficult for McGuinness’s Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, to stomach even a few years ago.

“You could see it as a last piece in

Article source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=cccf64d3fe280c805278f97237ea1181

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