AP News, December 8th, 2007
Northern Ireland leaders Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, bitter enemies turned partners in government, concluded their first joint visit to Washington with a celebration of peace with President Bush at the White House.
Paisley and McGuinness, who formed an alliance in May after decades of turmoil in Northern Ireland, smiled and chuckled with Bush during their meeting in the Oval Office.
"I congratulate you for seizing the moment and writing a hopeful chapter," Bush told them.
Paisley, 81, head of the Democratic Unionist Party that represents the British Protestant majority in Northern Ireland, is first minister of the Northern Ireland cabinet. McGuinness, 57, deputy leader of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party that represents most of the province's Irish Catholics, is deputy first minister.
The two leaders spent three days meeting with political and business leaders to encourage business investment in their country and promote an economic conference in Belfast in May 2008.
Northern Ireland's economy has improved greatly since rival paramilitary groups declared cease-fires in the mid-1990s. Today's unemployment rate is at 3.8 percent, making it the best-performing region in Britain.
But Northern Ireland is also heavily dependent on government jobs. There are more than 30,000 civil service jobs funded by British taxpayers, making the civil service the region's biggest employer.
"I know one way we can help, and that is to encourage our business leaders to take a good look at the economic opportunities that Northern Ireland presents," Bush said.
During the past few years, the United States has supported peace efforts that culminated in the formation of a unified Northern Ireland government. McGuinness thanked both the Bush and Clinton administrations for helping forge a peace.
"Up until the 26th of March this year, Ian Paisley and I never could accomplish anything about anything ... and now we have worked very closely together over the course of the last seven months, and there hasn't been an angry word between us," McGuinness said.
Paisley acknowledged the past political squabbles, but said, "I think we have come to the end of that. I think that peace has come. There will be a fight for peace. You don't win peace; you have to fight to keep it."
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton also met on Friday with the two leaders at a hotel — an appearance that could remind Irish American voters of her husband's effort pushing the two sides toward peace in the 1990's.
Clinton said the Northern Ireland peace process should be a blueprint for U.S. diplomacy toward other conflicts around the world. "It is a very good model," she said.
