Former US president among a number of high-profile political figures scheduled to attend funeral in Derry on Thursday afternoon

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Former US president Bill Clinton will be among the mourners at Thursday’s funeral of Martin McGuinness, the IRA commander turned political dealmaker who played a central role in bringing Northern Ireland’s Troubles to an end.

Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party and first minister in the last power-sharing government in the region, also confirmed that she would attend the funeral service for McGuinness in his native Derry on Thursday afternoon.

In his final act before resigning as deputy first minister in January, McGuinness criticised Foster over her handling of a botched green energy scheme and particularly her refusal to stand aside temporarily while a public inquiry was held into the massive losses incurred by it.

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McGuinness then resigned from his post in protest, triggering the collapse of the Sinn Féin-DUP coalition in Belfast.

But the bitter acrimony between Foster and McGuinness and a subsequent divisive election in which Sinn Féin made massive gains, will be put aside.

In a highly symbolic gesture, Foster said: “Having worked with Martin McGuinness for almost a decade, I want to pay my respects to his family on the occasion of his death.”

A victim of IRA violence herself when the organisation exploded a bomb near a school bus she was travelling on in her native Fermanagh in the 1980s, Foster sought to defend her decision to attend funeral mass for the one time IRA chief of staff. During the Troubles the IRA also tried to kill her late father, a policeman serving in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Foster said he wanted to acknowledge “that there are many republicans and nationalists who looked to Martin McGuinness as a leader, friend or mentor, who will be feeling a very real sense of loss that he has died in this way at the relatively young age of 66”.

She added: “I recognise that some will be critical of my decision to attend the funeral and I respect their view. Joining Foster, and Clinton will be Peter Robinson, the one time first minister who worked alongside McGuinness and the man she succeeded as DUP leader.

The Northern Ireland secretary, James Brokenshire, the Irish president, Michael D Higgins, and the Republic’s taoiseach, Enda Kenny, will also be in attendance.

Given the presence of so many political figures there will be a large security operation at the edge of the funeral. This is in large part due to the existence of a small but highly active violent dissident republican group, the New IRA, in Derry and the north-west region.

Just hours after McGuinness’s death on Tuesday the New IRA detonated an explosive device close to a police patrol in nearby Strabane which the Police Service of Northern Ireland said almost killed some of their officers.

The New IRA and other violent dissident groups opposed McGuinness’s peace strategy and compromise with unionism.

Mourners will attend requiem mass in St Columba’s church in Derry at 2pm. Thousands are expected to line the streets of the city as McGuinness’s coffin is taken from the family home near the Bogside to the church. Local Derry priest Father Michael Canny will be chief celebrant at the mass and will deliver the homily.

McGuinness died surrounded by family in the early hours of Tuesday in Derry’s Altnagelvin Hospital. He was suffering from a rare genetic condition, amyloidosis, which affects vital organs including the heart.

Among unionists there has been concern that there might have been paramilitary trappings associated with the McGuinness funeral such as the placing of a beret and black gloves on the coffin, which is standard procedure at funerals for IRA activists. However, sources in Derry said only the Irish tricolour would drape the coffin and there would be no overt paramilitary symbolism at the funeral.

In a debate over his legacy on Wednesday the woman who has succeeded McGuinness as Sinn Féin leader in the Northern Ireland assembly, Michelle O’Neill, described the veteran Derry republican as a political visionary.

However, the leader of the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice party, Jim Allister, told the sitting of the Stormont parliament that McGuinness’s hands had dripped “with the blood of of the innocent”.