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Hillary Clinton has repeatedly used the claim that she played a central role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland as evidence that she possesses foreign policy experience making her vastly more qualified than Barack Obama for the job of President of the United States. A key peace negotiator and Nobel Prize winner intimately familiar with the Northern Ireland peace process, however, says that Mrs. Clinton's claim is exaggerated and a "wee bit silly." Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, Nobel laureate, former First Minister of the province of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and a key player in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement for which Mrs. Clinton seeks to take credit, had the following to say as reported in London's Telegraph:
"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill going around.... She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.
Negotiator Conall McDevitt likewise recalls no significant role played by Mrs. Clinton in the peace process, noting that all significant communication with the US administration came from the president himself. An important meeting in Belfast that Mrs. Clinton claimed to have "pulled together" turns out to have been a tea party organized by the US Consulate. Conversation at the event "seemed a little bit stilted, a little prepared at times" according to the report, and Mrs. Clinton admired a stainless steel tea pot for keeping the brew "so nice and hot."
Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com
