Clinton Praises N. Ireland for Peace Efforts

President Clinton offered sober encouragement to the people of violence-weary Northern Ireland on Thursday, applauding their support for the peace process but cautioning that the test of their commitment will come when more terrorist bombs explode.

“The terror in Omagh was not the last bomb of the Troubles,” Clinton said in a speech here, using the broadly accepted term for the 30 years of sectarian violence in the province. “It was the opening shot of the vicious attack on peace.”

Arriving less than three weeks after the terrorist bombing in the town of Omagh killed 28 people, Clinton praised Northern Ireland’s combative factions for starting a drive for peace by reaching an agreement in April and its people for embracing the accord with an overwhelmingly positive vote a month later.

But Clinton’s tone was one of warning and challenge, instead of celebration.

“The question is not whether there will be more bombs and more attempts to undo with violence the verdict of the ballot box. There may well be,” he said. “The question is how will you react to it all, to the violence?”

Thursday afternoon, the president and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Omagh and met in a school gymnasium with about 500 people, most injured in the bombing or relatives of its victims. The Aug. 15 blast wounded more than 200 people.

After speaking briefly, the Clintons moved around the room, pausing to speak with individuals.

“As he shook hands with people, he found that many of them wanted to tell their personal stories and he realized that it would be very appropriate to linger and listen,” White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said.

People seemed to be at various stages of grieving, McCurry added. Some expressed anger. Others were frustrated. And still others urged the president to keep working toward peace.

Then the Clintons--accompanied by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Cherie Booth--walked solemnly along the block of Market Street that was damaged in the blast.

But the mood changed from respectful mourning to a cheery campaign walkabout by the time they reached the end of the damaged area. For about an hour, the four worked an enthusiastic crowd that lined the street about 10 people deep.

The emotional peak of the day did not come until evening, when Clinton addressed a crowd of several thousand in an open, grassy square in Armagh, a city of 50,000 and the historic home of St. Patrick.

Clinton stressed that the attack in Omagh by opponents of peace had “backfired.”

“Out of the unimaginably horrible agony of Omagh, the people said: It is high time somebody told these people that we are through with hate, through with war, through with destruction,” Clinton told the crowd.

Some in attendance confirmed Clinton’s assessment of the shift in the mood in Northern Ireland since the April peace accord, which calls for Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain as long as a majority wants it to and establishes a local government of Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Patricia Rooney, 47, an elementary school teacher, said that when the Good Friday agreement was signed she was very pessimistic about the prospects for peace.

“Now I think it’s going to be OK,” she said. “People here are tired of the trouble, and there has been a groundswell of yearning for peace.”

The Omagh bombing also has given impetus to tough anti-terrorism legislation, which was passed by the Irish and British parliaments Thursday and early today despite objections from critics who fear it will limit civil liberties.

Although Clinton ended Thursday with gusto, for much of the day he was uncharacteristically clumsy with words and appeared exhausted and beleaguered. He arrived in Northern Ireland after a two-day summit in Moscow with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and, late Thursday, flew to Dublin, Ireland.

Clinton was the first U.S. president to visit Northern Ireland when he traveled here in 1995 and spoke to massive crowds, urging them to end the violence between Catholics opposed to and Protestants supporting British rule. Throughout his presidency, Clinton has shown a strong personal involvement in the province’s fate.

It is widely believed that the peace process was helped by a political risk Clinton took in 1994, when Gerry Adams--whose group, Sinn Fein, is the political arm of the militant Irish Republican Army--was given a visa to visit the United States and attend an event at the White House.

In recent months, the president was deeply engaged in prodding the parties to the peace agreement and encouraging Northern Ireland’s residents to vote for the accord.

Blair declared in Belfast and later in Armagh that no other U.S. president had done as much for peace for the troubled province.

“The people of Northern Ireland owe you a deep debt of gratitude. And if this process ends where we want it to end, in lasting peace in Northern Ireland, then when the history of that peace is written, your place within it will be assured,” Blair said here.

Words were not the only rewards awaiting Clinton. He was presented with the news that Adams and Protestant leader David Trimble, who is first minister of the province, will meet Monday.

White House officials stressed that the meeting between the two longtime adversaries sends a powerful sign about positive movement in the peace process. But it is clear that deep tensions remain. Speaking at an event in Belfast, the provincial capital, Trimble directed sharp comments at Adams, who was in the front of the room.

“If the so-called war is really over, then there is no justification for holding on to illegal weapons,” said Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, the main group representing Northern Ireland’s pro-British Protestant majority.

Sinn Fein did make another positive move earlier this week, announcing the appointment of one of its senior officials to work with a commission that has been assigned the task of disarming paramilitary groups.

Many people here both in and out of politics believe Clinton’s visit helped inspire these developments.

“He has had a huge role to play in Sinn Fein’s commitments the last couple of days,” said Gary Trew, a teacher at a Protestant school.

“I’m sure they had something to do with Clinton’s imminent arrival.”