Clinton Both Stern, Sentimental in Irish Visit : Europe: In Dublin, the President says U.S. has a duty to send troops to Bosnia. But he also takes time out to get in touch with his roots.

The deployment of U.S. troops to Bosnia can produce “a dramatic change in that war-torn land,” just as risk-taking goodwill can bring lasting peace to the streets of Northern Ireland, President Clinton told admiring crowds that welcomed him Friday to the land of his ancestors.

Blending a sentimental return to family roots with sober affairs of state, Clinton warned Americans that backing away from peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina would be seen by U.S. allies as a betrayal.

“I would like to ask every American: How would you have felt when President Bush sent out the call for help in Desert Storm--which was a war, not a peacekeeping measure--if they said, ‘You handle that; you have more money, more soldiers, more interest there’?” the President said, pounding the lectern emphatically at a news conference with Irish Prime Minister John Bruton.

Today, Clinton takes his case directly to American troops of the 1st Armored Division in Germany, who will spearhead Task Force Eagle, the peacekeeping mission that will begin in Bosnia later this month. Clinton plans to send 20,000 U.S. ground troops plus thousands of support troops for the Bosnia mission.

The President said he will try to explain the mission and the risks to the 11,000 troops and their families when he speaks to them at a football field in Baumholder, Germany.

“I will tell them that we have done everything we can to minimize the risks,” he said. “Their safety is uppermost in my mind.”

On a long winter’s day in which he exuberantly ricocheted across Dublin’s elegant Georgian cityscape, Clinton on Friday sought to tie together several themes: the intertwined history of Ireland and the United States, the shared experience of Western nations in making peace around the world and the current challenge of ending the war in the Balkans.

“Our nation . . . has a vital stake in a Europe that is stable, strong and free,” he told Ireland’s Parliament. “But we know such a Europe can never be built as long as conflict tears at the heart of the continent in Bosnia.”

As he did repeatedly during his visit to Northern Ireland on Thursday, Clinton plunged into handshake-hungry crowds, at one point even removing his wedding ring, apparently fearful it might slip off.

Both in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, Clinton has been the recipient of public adulation--largely because, for the first time in memory, a U.S. President has made the northern conflict a prime focus of American policy.

“He has done more for Ireland than anyone,” said Ida Murphy, a 55-year-old homemaker from the port town of Dun Laoghaire, who stood in the square for two hours waiting to hear Clinton speak. “He put them all in a box, so no one can break the peace now.”

After conferring with Bruton, Clinton spoke at length about his view of the United States’ responsibility to send troops.

“Every day for almost 40 years, there has been a citizen of Ireland in some distant country working for peacekeeping in places where the United States did not go,” he said, referring to Irish participation in U.N. truce forces. “And they did not ask, ‘What is the immediate interest of the people of Ireland in doing that?’ So I think the United States has been very well-served by countries that have been willing to stand up with us . . . and I believe we should do this now.”

In the day’s emotional high point, Clinton addressed a roaring, flag-waving crowd estimated by police at almost 100,000 in College Green, a historic downtown square, and urged the people in the predominantly Roman Catholic Irish republic to support a compromise settlement in Northern Ireland.

“I know well that the immigration from your country to the shores of mine helped to make America great,” he said. “But I want more than anything for the young people of Ireland, wherever they live on this island, to be able to grow up and live out their dreams close to their roots--in peace and honor and freedom and equality.”

Using the language of therapy, he added: “Realize that those of you who have more emotional and physical space [than Northern Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants] must reach out and help them to take those next hard steps.”

But it was not all work for Clinton on Friday. His mother was a Cassidy, but prolonged White House research in a land of Cassidys failed to turn up a sound-bite-ready relative.

So when it was time for the Clintons to host a reception Friday afternoon, where else to hold it but at Cassidy’s Pub, at 42 Camden St. in the heart of Dublin. It’s not hard to find, right next to the aggressively red-white-and-blue Bill Board Cafe, where apple pie and cream goes for 1.35 pounds, or about $2.

The occasion was a get-together for Irish Americans traveling in the presidential party and Irish government officials. Cassidy’s Pub was chosen to celebrate the President’s heritage, but it hasn’t been owned by a Cassidy since around 1965. Friday’s host was Fran Ryder, who bought the pub in 1988.

“There’ve been about five owners since there was a Cassidy, but Cassidy’s it was and Cassidy’s it is,” Ryder said. “They wanted a typical pub where the President could have a glass with friends, short-listed the possibles down to three or four, and we, luckily, were picked.”

Ryder knows how to pour drinks for Americans. He earned his stake for Cassidy’s tending bar for eight years at Rosie O’Grady’s on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan.