A major security operation is in place in Galway city today to protect the US First Lady, Mrs Hillary Clinton. Growing anti-US feeling in Europe over the Balkans crisis has precipitated the measures.
Mrs Clinton is due to receive an honorary degree from NUI Galway, and will inaugurate the university's millennium lecture series, marking 150 years of student enrolment.
She is also due to become the first woman to receive the freedom of the city of Galway. About 1,000 guests have been invited to this morning's ceremonies on the university campus.
Mrs Clinton's plane touched down at Shannon airport at 12.26 this morning. She was greeted on the tarmac by the US Ambassador, Mr Michael Sullivan, his wife Jane, and the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms Sile de Valera.
Moments later she left in a cavalcade for Galway, where she was expected to stay overnight at Glenloe Abbey.
Liaison officers from the US Secret Service have been in Galway for the past week, working with senior Garda personnel, including members of the Garda Emergency Response Unit. The Army has also been involved.
Access to the university grounds will be restricted from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., and University Road will be closed to traffic during that time.
Dordan, the all-woman traditional quartet, an, will entertain the guests on campus while awaiting the First Lady's arrival, and the Army Band of the Fourth Western Brigade will perform on the parade route.
Mrs Clinton will be welcomed at the university's quadrangle by the president, Dr Patrick Fottrell, and Mrs Esther Fottrell. She will be introduced to Irish and north American students, as well as academic staff working in women's studies and human rights. Mrs Clinton will then don the ceremonial robes for the conferring and will join the robed procession to the conferring hall in Aras na MacLeinn, the student centre. She will receive an honorary doctorate of laws (LlD), and will deliver the first millennium lecture entitled "Our Obligations to Each Other: the Continuing Quest for Peace."
It is expected that she will refer to the situation in the North during her speech.
After the lecture the freedom of the city of Galway will be bestowed on her. The Mayor, MsAngela Lupton, and Mr Joe Gavin, city manager, will officiate.
The university's president and Mrs Clinton will then lead the robed procession back to the quadrangle where a reception will take place.
Mrs Clinton is due to travel to Belfast this afternoon to fulfil an engagement with the city's Vital Voices organisation, a women's group working for peace and reconciliation in the North.
Dr Fottrell issued the invitation to Mrs Clinton during a 20-second conversation on her previous Irish trip to Limerick in September. Acceptance was influenced by the support of two senior US political figures, Senator Chris Dodd, a member of the US Foreign Relations Committee, who has a house in Roundstone, Co Galway, and the US Secretary of Education, Mr Richard Riley, who opened the new Irish Centre for Human Rights at the university during the Clintons' Limerick/Ballybunion visit last year.
Dr Fottrell accepts that there may be anti-US protests in Galway today. "We are a democracy. People have the right to voice their views," he told The Irish Times.
The US has still not signed the UN Declaration of Human Rights, but Dr Fottrell says he admires Mrs Clinton's record in the areas of healthcare and human rights.
NUI Galway has a strong contingent of US students, numbering about 400, and maintains a fundraising presence in the US.
No longer the "derelict college in a decaying town" as described by Gladstone in 1873, the institution currently generates some £100 million every year for the local economy. It has 9,000 students, with courses for another 2,000, and 1,000 staff.
Three other prominent figures have also confirmed participation in the university's millennium lecture series. They are the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson (May 20th); Mr George Mitchell (July 8th); and the Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney (September 16th).
