On the 25th anniversary of peace in Belfast, U.S. President Joe Biden pushed Northern Irish political leaders to restore its power-sharing government, promising dozens of big U.S. firms would invest in the region.

Biden, passionately proud of his Irish background, met British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for just over half a day before heading to the Irish Republic for two-and-a-half days of speeches and meetings with officials and distant relatives.

The brief Belfast trip came during the current political deadlock. The devolved power-sharing government, a major feature of the 1998 peace settlement, has not convened for more than a year over post-Brexit trade arrangements.

“It took long, hard years of work to get to this place,” Biden remarked at the new Ulster University campus in Belfast, noting that the city has changed since he first visited as a young senator.

Belfast is Northern Ireland’s pulsing heart positioned to drive enormous economic opportunities. Many significant American firms want to invest here.”

The U.S.-backed 1998 peace treaty ended 30 years of warfare between Roman Catholic nationalists and Protestant Unionist supporters of British authority. However, conflicts, most recently over how Britain’s exit from the E.U. impacts the border with Ireland, have slowed political progress.

Biden said a strong devolved government would “draw even greater opportunity in this region” for Northern Ireland.

I hope the assembly and executive will return shortly. “That’s a judgment for you, not me, but I hope it happens,” he told Northern Ireland’s five major party leaders.

Biden said the Windsor Framework arrangement between the E.U. and Britain to eliminate post-Brexit trade obstacles between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. provided stability and predictability to promote investment.

That accord has failed to persuade the DUP, the region’s main pro-British party, to abandon its boycott of the local parliament. As a result, power-sharing has been suspended and broken since 1998.

DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said Biden’s visit, the first by a U.S. president in 10 years, did not affect his party’s complaint against trade laws that treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the U.K.

Donaldson said the DUP would propose modifications to the UK/EU accord to the British government within weeks. London refuses to renegotiate.

Donaldson, who, like other local leaders, had a brief one-on-one meeting with Biden, said the president made clear he was not in Belfast to intervene and that his address “was much more balanced than we have heard perhaps in the past.”

A White House source said Biden’s record “shows that he’s not anti-British” after current and former DUP colleagues called him “anti-British” and “hating the United Kingdom.”

As London and Brussels attempted to reach a divorce settlement that would not undermine the peace accord, relations between Britain and Biden’s White House worsened.

Sunak said he spoke to Biden on Wednesday about “incredible economic opportunities” for Northern Ireland, his hope that power-sharing will be restored soon, and their “very close partners” status.

Tea was served at Biden’s Belfast hotel.

Former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, a Good Friday Agreement architect, called it a “big own goal” since Northern Ireland had no parliament to receive the president.

Biden began his Irish journey in County Louth, where his great-grandfather, James Finnegan, was born.

It feels great. “It feels like I’m coming home,” Biden remarked, wearing a baseball cap, as he glanced across the water from Carlingford Castle to Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland, where his great-great-grandfather, shoemaker Owen Finnegan, left for the U.S. in 1849. The family followed a year later.

Micheál Martin, Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister, and Rob Kearney, his most famous distant relative, joined Biden at the castle. Ireland’s most successful rugby player hails from Louth.

On Friday, Biden will see relatives from his other side in Mayo and give a public speech.

“It’s Ireland,” he laughed.

Carlingford and Dundalk residents, where the teetotal Biden met additional relatives at the Windsor Bar, were equally thrilled.

“Welcoming home a president of the United States, who would ever have thought we’d be doing that,” said Carlingford resident Michael Farrow, donning an American flag over a plastic rain poncho.