A Lifetime of Experience

qwerty on 08 Mar 2008

I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

— Hillary Clinton

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.

— Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey,
Nobel Peace Prize Winner

There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone. I was with Hume regularly during calls in the months leading up to the Good Friday Agreement when he was taking calls from the White House and they were invariably coming from the president.

— Conall McDevitt,
an SDLP negotiator and aide to Mr Hume during the talks

It was a nice thing to see her there, with the women’s groups. It helped, I suppose. But it was ancillary to the main thing. It was part of the stage effects, the optics. There were all kinds of peace movements, women’s movements throughout the Troubles. But it was more about the clout of Bill Clinton.

— Tim Pat Coogan,
Irish Historian