NORTHERN DELEGATION:SDLP LEADER Margaret Ritchie has written to the North's First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness demanding that she and Ulster Unionist Party leader Sir Reg Empey be invited to today's meeting at the White House.
Ms Ritchie said she was awaiting a reply from the two leaders of the powersharing Executive. The letter was “seeking to be part of their meeting with Obama” and their other scheduled meeting with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
The recently elected SDLP leader said this would be “the political manifestation of operating a four-party Executive, instead of a two-party Executive”.
As part of the recent Hillsborough Agreement, she and Sir Reg were looking at “function and delivery” in the Executive at present.
She said they had been invited to the St Patrick’s Day reception in the White House this evening and the Speaker’s Lunch on Capitol Hill earlier, though not to the private meeting with the US president. She had not written to the White House about the matter as she considered it was “more appropriate” as a Minister in the Executive that she should write to her two senior colleagues.
Ms Ritchie emerged from the US state department in Washington just as Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin was holding a press briefing on his meeting earlier with Mrs Clinton, but the SDLP leader said this was entirely coincidental.
The Northern Ireland Minister for Social Development had been meeting US ambassador-at-large on global women’s issues Melanne Verveer for an hour over the role of women in promoting urban regeneration. She also briefed Ms Verveer on political difficulties the SDLP had with the recent Hillsborough Agreement, although the party had voted for the devolution of policing and justice in the Stormont Assembly last week.
She told Ms Verveer of the need for other forms of devolution as part of building a “shared society”.
