THE Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) called for a defence of traditional Irish neutrality as it led a protest through the streets of Dublin today, saying “warmonger and imperialist in chief” US President Joe Biden was not welcome in the country.

Alongside Irish Anti-War Movement, Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Cuba Solidarity Forum, Students for Change, People Before Profit and the Connolly Youth Movement, the CPI highlighted “the dangerous and destructive nature of US militarism for people and the planet.

The CPI said that in the wake of its declining economic dominance, the US is strengthening its military presence around the globe. 

The party said that the visit of the US president cannot be separated from successive Irish governments’ undermining of Irish neutrality. 

The statement said: “The aim is to draw closer to Nato and already have full-on involvement with EU military operations. 

“They seek to get rid of Ireland’s neutrality, despite the fact that the majority of Irish people are in favour of keeping it.”

The statement said: “Meanwhile, US troops, weapons and military vehicles continue to pass through Shannon Airport on a regular basis, en route to raining death and destruction upon the peoples of the world.”

According to the protest organisers, the use of a proxy war by the US in Ukraine and increasing tensions with China is a method of “confronting its main economic and political rivals.”

They said: “Aside from killing, maiming and destruction, the business of war is a key driver of climate change, pushing us ever closer to environmental catastrophe.”

Earlier today, Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald told Sky News: “I think undoubtedly President Biden will reflect on the great success of the last 25 years of building peace.”

Sinn Fein won the elections for the Stormont Assembly last May, but the Democratic Unionist Party has boycotted the power-sharing arrangements ever since.

Ms McDonald said: “I have no doubt that he perhaps shares my disappointment, Sinn Fein’s disappointment that on this occasion marking 25 years of the peace accord, the institutions aren’t up and running, that we still don’t have a government in Belfast and that the DUP continues its boycott.

She said that she hoped the US president would send “a very clear message that now is the time to end the boycott, to stop this sense of limbo and to deliver for people in the north of Ireland of all political persuasions the government that they deserve.”