Charles shakes hands with man who was once an IRA bomber

THE PRINCE of Wales shook hands with former IRA bomber and Sinn Fein Stormont Assembly member Gerry Kelly during a visit to Belfast.

Charles began a two-day trip to Northern Ireland yesterday with a recital by the Ulster Orchestra in a 19thcentury Methodist church in Belfast which is undergoing major restoration.

He has spoken many times before about reconciliation in Ireland and has previously met the former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams.

The prince’s uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed alongside three others in an IRA bombing during a boating trip near his family holiday home in Co Sligo in the west of Ireland in 1979.

Mr Kelly escaped from Northern Ireland’s highsecurity Maze Prison in 1983 while serving a jail sentence for the 1973 bombing of the Old Bailey.

He became a senior republican negotiator ahead of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and has embraced the peace process for decades, serving as a minister in the powersharing executive.

Mr Kelly said: “This is about outreach and it was a deliberate act to come down.

“No better place to do it than north Belfast, a very mixed area often described as a microcosm of the difficulties or characteristics of the whole of the North.

“It is a patchwork quilt of communities.”

North Belfast was the scene of multiple sectarian killings during the 30-year conflict and part of it was once dubbed “murder mile”.

Charles also sampled local craft cheese and beer before moving to his next engagement during the twoday trip.