President starts 7-day visit to California

The President, Mrs McAleese, left Dublin yesterday for a weeklong visit to California.

The tour begins today with a breakfast hosted jointly by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and Bord Failte in the Regent Beverly Wiltshire hotel, Los Angeles.

In a busy programme Mrs McAleese will then have a meeting with the Mayor of Los Angeles, Mr Richard Riordan, followed by a reception at the mayor's official residence, the Getty House.

From there she goes to her third engagement before lunch, an address to the World Affairs Council of Los Angeles, which she is scheduled to deliver in the Baltimore Hotel at noon.

This evening the President will be back in the Regent Beverly Wiltshire Hotel to attend a reception for the Irish community in Los Angeles.

Mrs McAleese is scheduled to have 15 engagements between today and Wednesday, not including a private weekend which she intends to spend in the San Francisco area.

She will receive two awards at functions tomorrow.

The first is the conferring of an honorary degree at Loyola Marymount Law School in Los Angeles. The second is from the Irish American Bar Association which will present her with its Daniel O'Connell Award at a lunch in the Baltimore Hotel.

On Monday Mrs McAleese will visit Stanford University and address the Institute for International Studies and the Graduate School of Business at the Bechtel Conference Centre.

On Tuesday she meets the Mayor of San Francisco, before delivering an address to the Commonwealth Club and the World Affairs Council of Northern California. The topic of the address is "Ireland in the next Millennium".

From there Mrs McAleese will go to the United Irish Cultural Centre to attend a reception for the Irish community. This will be followed by a dinner hosted by the San Francisco directors of the American Ireland Fund.

On Wednesday the President goes to Sacramento, where she is scheduled to have a meeting with Governor Gray Davis, followed by a joint press conference and lunch hosted by Mr Davis and the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce.

Mrs McAleese returns to Dublin on Wednesday evening.