Mr. Obama will head overseas late Sunday after speaking earlier in the day to a pro-Israel lobbying group that has expressed deep suspicions of his latest efforts to break the deadlock between the Israelis and Palestinians. The upheaval in the Middle East is likely to figure prominently throughout a trip that will also take him to Britain, France and Poland.
But his 24 hours in Ireland will be a respite from geopolitics, allowing Mr. Obama to engage in a familiar ritual for American presidents: celebrating his Irish roots, however distant. He plans to drop by Moneygall, a rural hamlet where his great-great-great grandfather, Fulmouth Kearney, lived before immigrating to the United States in 1850.
Mr. Obama?s arrival follows by days a historic trip to the Irish Republic by Queen Elizabeth II. It was the first by a British monarch and showed how far the two countries have gone in ending the years of strife known as The Troubles. The Irish may be hard-pressed to match the jubilant reception they gave the queen, though they prize their ancestral ties to Mr. Obama through his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.
?This is a homecoming of sorts for President Obama,? a deputy national security adviser, Benjamin J. Rhodes, said. ?He?s very excited to see this small town in Ireland from which he has roots, and we?re very much looking forward to seeing some of the people of Moneygall.?
Later on Monday, Mr. Obama will deliver an address in Dublin, on the historic College Green at Trinity College, where hundreds of thousands flocked to hear President Bill Clinton speak in 1995. Mr. Clinton named a special envoy to Northern Ireland, Senator George J. Mitchell, who helped negotiate the so-called Good Friday agreement in 1998, which defused the violence in Northern Ireland.
Underscoring the intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Mitchell turned in his resignation two weeks ago as President Obama?s special envoy to the Middle East after more than two years of futile efforts to bring the two sides to the table. The tensions in the region will loom large in London, the next stop on Mr. Obama?s itinerary. Administration officials said they expected the president to discuss the NATO-led air campaign in Libya with Prime Minister David Cameron in their meeting on Tuesday. Britain and France have pressed the United States to take a larger role in the operation, according to diplomats, out of frustration that it has failed to dislodge the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
?I?m confident they?ll talk about it in their meeting,? said Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council. She predicted that Mr. Obama and Mr. Cameron would use their talks ?to show Qaddafi that time is not on his side.?
On Tuesday evening, Queen Elizabeth will host a state dinner for Mr. Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, at Buckingham Palace. Sticklers for protocol will no doubt be watching to see if Mrs. Obama puts her arm around the queen as she did briefly during a previous visit, prompting clucks from those who said it was a breach of decorum.
And on Wednesday Mr. Obama will address both houses of Parliament and elaborate, aides say, on the ideas he introduced last Thursday in his speech on the Arab Spring and the future of the Middle East.
Questions about the Arab world will likely resurface at Mr. Obama?s next stop: a meeting of the Group of Eight world powers in Deauville, France. The leaders, officials said, will discuss how the West can help Egypt, Tunisia and other Arab states in political transition. Even though Mr. Obama announced $2 billion in aid and debt relief for Egypt last week, he is relying on Europe to shoulder much of the financial burden.
Officials also said they expected the topic of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, to come up at the meeting. But they stressed that Mr. Obama would say little about the accusations of sexual assault against Mr. Strauss-Kahn, beyond noting Mr. Obama?s desire for an ?open process? to select a new managing director.
On Friday, Mr. Obama will fly to Poland for what is a makeup visit after the ash cloud from an Icelandic volcano forced him to cancel his attendance at the funeral of Poland?s president, Lech Kaczynski, last year. (Never mind that another Icelandic volcano is now erupting, prompting fears that a new cloud could drift over Europe later in the week.)
Polish officials are expected to press the president to allow Poland to join the State Department?s visa waiver program, which would make it easier for Poles to visit the United States. Mr. Obama has pledged to do this before he leaves office, and officials said he would discuss progress toward that goal during his 24 hours in Warsaw.