Obama Arrives in Ireland for Six-Day Trip to Europe

Obama Arrives in Ireland for Six-Day Trip to Europe

DUBLIN — President Obama arrived in Ireland on Monday to make a familiar pilgrimage for an American president: returning to a country that lays claim to being one of his ancestral homes.

Landing here under blustery dark skies that soon gave way to sunshine, Mr. Obama set off to find his inner Irishman with plans to travel to Moneygall, the farming hamlet where his great-great-great-grandfather lived before immigrating to the United States in 1850.

In going to Ireland’s emerald hinterland, Mr. Obama was retracing the steps of Presidents Kennedy, Reagan and Clinton, though this product of Kenya and Kansas only learned of his Irish roots in 2007, after an inquisitive churchman tracked down his family’s records.

First, Mr. Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama were welcomed by President Mary McAleese, a lawyer and native of Northern Ireland, who watched as Mr. Obama helped plant an Irish upright oak tree — following, again, in the tradition of previous American presidents.

For the president, his 24 hours in Ireland are a brief respite from a week filled with tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and worries about political upheaval in the Middle East..

Mr. Obama travelled overseas late Sunday after speaking earlier in the day to a pro-Israel lobbying group that has expressed deep suspicions of his latest efforts to break the deadlock between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The upheaval in the Middle East is likely to figure prominently throughout a trip that will also take him to Britain, France and Poland.

Mr. Obama’s arrival in Ireland follows by days a historic trip to the Irish Republic by Queen Elizabeth II. It was the first by a British monarch and showed how far the two countries had come in ending the years of strife known as the Troubles. The Irish may be hard-pressed to match the jubilant reception they gave the queen, though they prize their ancestral ties to Mr. Obama through his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.

“This is a homecoming of sorts for President Obama,” a deputy national security adviser, Benjamin J. Rhodes, said. “He’s very excited to see this small town in Ireland from which he has roots.”

Later on Monday, Mr. Obama will deliver an address in Dublin, on the historic College Green at Trinity College, where hundreds of thousands flocked to hear President Bill Clinton speak in 1995. Mr. Clinton named a special envoy to Northern Ireland, then-Senator George J. Mitchell, who helped negotiate the so-called Good Friday agreement in 1998, which defused the violence in Northern Ireland.

Underscoring the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Mitchell turned in his resignation two weeks ago as President Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East.

The tensions in the region will loom large in London, the next stop on Mr. Obama’s itinerary. Administration officials said they expected the president to discuss the NATO-led air campaign in Libya with Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday. Britain and France have pressed the United States to take a larger role in the operation, according to diplomats, out of frustration that it has failed to dislodge the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council, predicted that Mr. Obama and Mr. Cameron would use their talks “to show Qaddafi that time is not on his side.”

On Tuesday evening, Queen Elizabeth is to host a state dinner for Mr. Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, at Buckingham Palace.

And on Wednesday Mr. Obama plans to address both houses of Parliament and elaborate, aides say, on the ideas he introduced last Thursday in his speech on the Arab Spring and the future of the Middle East.

Questions about the Arab world are likely to resurface at Mr. Obama’s next stop: a meeting of the Group of 8 world powers in Deauville, France. The leaders, officials said, will discuss how the West can help Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab states in political transition. Although Mr. Obama announced $2 billion in aid and debt relief for Egypt last week, he is relying on Europe to shoulder much of the financial burden.

On Friday, Mr. Obama will fly to Poland for what is a makeup visit after the ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano forced him to cancel his attendance at the funeral of Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski, last year. (Never mind that another Icelandic volcano is now erupting, prompting fears that a new cloud could drift over Europe later in the week.)

Polish officials are expected to press the president to allow Poland to join the State Department’s visa waiver program, which would make it easier for Poles to visit the United States. Mr. Obama has pledged to do this before he leaves office.