Prince Charles shakes hands with Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams in historic Galway meeting
Political wing of IRA killed Charles's uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, in bombing 36 years ago
Prince Charles shook hands with Gerry Adams in Ireland Tuesday, his first meeting with the leader of the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which killed his great uncle in a bomb attack 36 years ago.
Charles and his wife, Camilla, arrived in the western city of Galway for the start of a four-day visit to the Republic of Ireland and the neighbouring British territory of Northern Ireland.
It is Charles' third trip to the Irish Republic since the outlawed IRA called a 1994 ceasefire.
He met Adams at National University of Ireland in Galway. He planned to visit the village of Mullaghmore, where the IRA assassinated Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1979, on Wednesday.
It will be the first time Adams has met a senior member of the royal family.
In addition to Mountbatten, three others, including Charles's 14-year-old godson, were killed when the IRA blew up a boat that Mountbatten — a senior British military commander in the Second World War — was using during a holiday in the region.
Charles has long been a figure of hate among Irish nationalists. He is colonel-in-chief of the British Army's Parachute Regiment, which had a role in the Bloody Sunday shootings in 1972 in which 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers were killed.
Adams said the visit was an opportunity to promote reconciliation and that, while the Parachute Regiment had killed many Irish citizens, Charles "also has been bereaved by the actions of republicans.
"Thankfully the conflict is over," Adams said in a statement. "But there remains unresolved injustices. These must be rectified and a healing process developed."
In 2012, Charles's mother Queen Elizabeth met Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander and a senior member of Sinn Fein, which was seen as a landmark step in rapprochement in Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland has been largely peaceful since a 1998 power-sharing deal ended three decades of violence between Protestants who want to remain loyal to the Crown and Catholics favouring unification with Ireland.
The IRA ended its 30-year armed campaign against British rule in 1998, but small splinter groups have continued to launch attacks against British targets, and security is tight for Charles's visit.
With files from The Associated Press