"My message is, to those parties which aren't involved in the process, they ought to join and not wreck it," Clinton said during an appearance with Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern. "And to those who are part of the process and have disagreements, I hope they try to work them out."
The president and his wife, Senator-elect Hillary Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, were met at Dublin airport by Ahern and other Irish government leaders. Clinton then met with Ahern – his ally in pushing Northern Ireland peace – and Irish President Mary McAleese.
Even before Clinton left Washington, senior U.S. officials, most notably National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley, were dropping hints that the president wanted to remain an active peace broker in Northern Ireland even after his term of office ends Jan. 20.
Clinton said: "If I can be a resource, I will. If I can ever help the Irish, of course I will."
He acknowledged, however, that President-elect Bush might have someone else in mind to head up the U.S. peace efforts, and said he would honor any decision.
Expectations were high in Dublin's political circles that Clinton would use this visit to push for major progress.
"The fact of the president's trip has intensified the pace of discussions among the parties and among the governments," said White House national security adviser Sandy Berger.
Berger said Clinton wanted his presence to remind the parties "what's at stake" and "create an environment in which the resolution of these problems in the coming days and weeks will be easier."
"It's ultimately for the parties to come to their own resolution of what can be done in terms of the various issues," Berger said. "I think the president will try to draw them out and try to see what they're prepared to do."
Later, Clinton traveled to the city of Dundalk, where he delivered a speech with a muted allusion to largely unheeded calls on the Catholic nationalist Irish Republican Army and other paramilitaries to take steps toward disarmament.
"Violence suffocates opportunity," Clinton said, pointing to the economic benefits gained by peace so far.
"I come here near the end of my eight years of service as president of the United States to ask you to protect this progress, to cherish it and to build on it."
Clinton's remarks fell well short of an outright call for republican forces to disarm, however, an appeal many expected the president to make.
Ulster Unionist party leader David Trimble, the first minister of the Power-Sharing Executive in Northern Ireland, is under growing attack from his own party over the IRA's continued refusal to start disarming, even though Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, has two Cabinet positions alongside Unionists in the Executive.
If Trimble is toppled, his party would pull out of the Executive and power-sharing would collapse, undoing the progress achieved since the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement. That would greatly increase the danger that the IRA would end its truce and that Protestant paramilitary groups would follow it.
Northern Ireland could then slide down a new deadly slope of escalating violence, made worse by the release of dozens of terrorists from both sides by the British government in "confidence building measures" since the 1998 agreement was signed.
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