DUBLIN, (Reuters) – Queen Elizabeth honoured Irish people killed fighting for independence from Britain yesterday in a powerful gesture of reconciliation few people would have believed possible even in recent times.
The queen laid a wreath at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance, Ireland’s monument to its fallen heros, before a hushed crowd of dignitaries, soldiers and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, whose uncle was killed by militant Irish nationalists in 1979.
The visit, the first by a British monarch since Ireland won independence from London in 1921, is designed to show how warm neighbourly relations have