Thatcher Pays Surprise Visit to N. Ireland
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BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher today toured a front-line area of Northern Ireland under tight security, her first Christmas visit to the strife-torn province since the Irish Republican Army tried to assassinate her in 1984.
Thatcher, whose arrival was not announced in advance, flew in about dawn and was immediately helicoptered to the Armagh, area where Irish nationalist guerrillas are active near Northern Ireland’s border with the Irish Republic.
The IRA is fighting to oust Britain from the mostly Protestant province so it can be united with the Roman Catholic Irish Republic.
Thatcher visited police and British troops in the front-line outposts against the IRA and inspected damage caused by a recent guerrilla bomb attack on a military base at Middletown.
It was Thatcher’s first Christmas visit since 1983, 10 months before an IRA bomb at Brighton on the English mainland wrecked the hotel where she was staying with members of her government.
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