The President, Mrs McAleese, has begun a two-day visit to west Africa on what is her first overseas trip since being inaugurated for a second term last month.
The President and Dr Martin McAleese yesterday arrived in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, with an Irish delegation which includes the Minister for Defence, Mr O'Dea, and the chief-of-staff, Lieut Gen Jim Sreenan.
The party is due to travel to the Liberian capital, Monrovia, this morning for a pre-Christmas visit to Camp Clara, where some 450 Irish troops have been based for the past year. They form part of a 15,000-strong UNMIL peacekeeping force that has been deployed in Liberia since the end of the country's 15-year civil war last year.
Mrs McAleese yesterday paid a courtesy call in Dakar on President Abdoulaye Wade. She told Mr Wade that the Republic of Senegal was a force of stability in the troubled west Africa region. She was also aware Senegal had recently been afflicted with a plague of locusts, and said Ireland sympathised with the people of Senegal for the difficulties this had caused.
Ireland was keen to foster greater ties with Senegal, and to this end she proposed Ireland's embassy in Nigeria should also be assigned to Senegal.
Mr Wade told Mrs McAleese he was in favour of any measures that would result in greater ties between the two countries.
Today the President will begin her short visit to Liberia by calling on the chairman of the national transitional government, Mr Charles Gyude Bryant, in Monrovia.
Mrs McAleese will tour Camp Clara, just outside the centre of Monrovia, and will distribute Christmas cards to the troops and switch on the lights on the camp's Christmas tree. She will also address the Irish battalion and perform a UN wreath-laying ceremony. She and Dr McAleese will be the guests of honour at a luncheon at the camp hosted by battalion commander Lieut Col Jim Long.
The Irish delegation will visit a number of projects in Monrovia, including St Michael's Hospice for HIV/AIDS patients, before departing for Dublin tonight.