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US President-elect Joe Biden has said closing the Irish border after Brexit “would not be right.”
e was speaking in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, after announcing his nominees for top national security and foreign policy positions.
He said that having spoken with Taoiseach Micheal Martin, as well as other European leaders, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland must remain open.
“We have worked too hard to make Ireland work,” he told RTÉ.
“I have spoken to the British Prime Minister, I have spoken to the Taoiseach, I have spoken to others, like the French.
“The idea of having the northern and southern border closed again is just not right, we have to keep the border open,” he added.
He presented his selections for his national security team and declared that “America is back.”
It was his first substantial offer of how he will change from the Trump administration’s “America First” policies by relying on foreign policy and national security experts from the Democratic establishment to serve as some of his most important advisers.
All of Biden’s veterans in Washington have ties to the administration of former President Barack Obama, as the president-elect has tried to convey a clear message about his desire to restore a more predictable engagement of the United States on the world stage.
“It is a team that reflects the fact that the United States is back, ready to lead the world, not to withdraw from it,” said Biden, in an introductory event in which his teams were on stage, at least six feet away and masked.
The president-elect’s team includes Antony Blinken, a well-regarded veteran foreign policy expert on Capitol Hill whose ties to Biden go back some 20 years, for secretary of state; the lawyer Alejandro Mayorkas will be Secretary of National Security; veteran diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield to be US Ambassador to the United Nations; and former Obama White House alumnus Jake Sullivan as national security adviser.
Avril Haines, a former CIA deputy director, was selected to serve as director of national intelligence, the first woman to hold that position, and former Secretary of State John Kerry will make a curtain call as a special envoy on climate change.
Online editors
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