The DUP Mayor of Derry yesterday became the first member of his party to welcome formally a president of the Republic to Northern Ireland. The meeting between the President, Mrs McAleese, and Alderman Joseph Miller took place at the offices of a rural community group at Killaloo, 10 miles from Derry.
Mrs McAleese, in Derry to fulfil some engagements, had earlier met Mr Martin McGuinness and Mr Mitchel McLaughlin of Sinn Fein at a function in Dove House in the Bogside. Then with her husband, Dr Martin McAleese, she was driven to Killaloo for her meeting with Mr Miller.
The mayor confirmed the meeting had been discussed by senior members of his party. "Yes, my meeting with her was discussed at a high level within my party. Those discussions, which I was not privy to, were of a confidential nature and I don't know what was decided.
"I am trying to do my best as Mayor of Londonderry without prostituting my political principles and I hope that my party leader and others will accept that I am trying to do my best as mayor in a very nationalist city," he said.
Yesterday afternoon the President and Mr Miller shared a platform at a city-centre conference for the deaf.
Mrs McAleese said yesterday that she was looking forward to next month's meeting with Queen Elizabeth when the two heads of state are due to officially open a tower in Messines on November 11th together with King Albert of Belgium. The tower commemorates the thousands of soldiers from the island of Ireland who were killed in the first World War.
Mrs McAleese said she was looking forward enormously to jointly opening the commemorative tower next month. "It is going to be a very, very special day. It is a day in which the Irish Government and the British government have together co-funded a memorial to those men and women whose lives were offered in the service of the war, that awful war that was to end all wars."