DUBLIN — Prince Charles met Sinn Fein party President Gerry Adams during a trip to western Ireland on Tuesday in what was billed as a hugely significant moment for Anglo-Irish relations.
Charles, holding a cup of tea, exchanged a few words with Adams at a reception in a crowded, noisy room at the National University of Ireland — the first time a senior member of the British royal family had met with Adams.
Adams has always denied being a member of the Irish Republican Army, although former members have identified him as a leading figure in the organization, which until 1998 led an armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland. The group killed the prince’s great-uncle Louis Mountbatten in a 1979 bombing. Mountbatten’s 14-year-old grandson and a 15-year-old boy, also were killed.
“One couldn’t help but be regretful about the loss, particularly when there are children involved,” Adams said.
In recent years, there have been a number of significant handshakes and visits in the long road to reconciliation between Ireland and the United Kingdom, a constitutional monarchy where Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state.
In 2012, during a visit to Belfast, the queen extended a gloved hand to Sinn Fein member Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister of Northern Ireland’s provincial government and a former IRA commander.
The meeting Tuesday with Charles, the queen’s oldest son, carries particular weight in part because he is the colonel-in-chief of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment. The regiment played an important role in the “Troubles,” the name given to the three decades of violence and bloodshed in Northern Ireland that largely ended in 1998 with the Good Friday peace accord.
The regiment’s soldiers were involved in the killing of 14 unarmed Irish protesters during a march in 1972, an incident known as Bloody Sunday.
“Both he and we expressed regret at what had happened from 1968 onward,” Adams said, referring to the start of the Northern Ireland conflict, when street confrontations between Protestant police and Catholic protesters inspired the deployment of British troops and the rise of the modern IRA.
