The State - News from April 8, 1987

A man who arranges visits by children from Northern Ireland and Lebanon to the United States said he will use an Irish passport to attend a reunion of Moslem and Christian young people in Lebanon, because the U.S. Department of State will not give him one. Vincent Lavery, who organized Children’s Committee 10 to bring Protestant and Catholic teen-agers from Northern Ireland together in American homes and extended the program to Lebanon last year, tried to get a passport to attend the April 16 reunion. But the State Department, which bans most travel by Americans to Lebanon, turned him down. So Lavery told the Fresno Bee he will use a passport issued by Ireland, where he was born. “From the Irish point of view,” he explained, “I’ve got dual citizenship.”