Clinton remains ‘kind of hopeful’ over future of North’s peace process
“I am kind of hopeful about it,” said the former US President who was a key contributor to the Good Friday Agreement. “What’s interesting is that with all this long political stalemate, no one has seriously suggested that anybody wants to back to the way it was. I’m encouraged by that. This is a problem time will take care of.”
By way of a good omen, one of the youngest fans to queue for his book-signing was Orla Daly from Cavan.
Mr Clinton was delighted to hear that Orla will be celebrating her tenth birthday on the tenth anniversary of the first IRA ceasefire next week.
Although pressed on issues from the past, including his time in the White House and the Monica Lewinsky affair, yesterday the 42nd US president preferred to keep focused on the future.
He insisted that he couldn’t find anybody in a book queue who bought his autobiography to read about Monica. He said they just wanted to know more about his life and reflect on the last half century of America’s history.
And while he admitted he missed the buzz of the presidency, he said he had plenty to keep him busy. “I’ve had a wonderful time. I work around the world with my foundation. We have economic projects in poor communities across the world: AIDS projects in 13 Caribbean countries and five African countries and we’ll be in China and India soon,” he said. Mr Clinton added with pride that he had successfully campaigned for a 75% in the price of generic AIDS drugs.
He wouldn’t be drawn on the likelihood of securing a job under a possible John Kerry administration, but fully endorsed the Democratic candidate and said he felt a Kerry-led government would have more interest in Ireland.
“I believe that Kerry would be more interested in this, because he has all his ties to Europe, because of the incredible interest in his home state of Massachusetts in the peace process. I think he has a certain predilection to this,” Mr Clinton said.
He was also particularly pleased to meet Dublin mother, Eavan O’Halloran, who introduced her seven-week-old Washington-born daughter Chiara.
“I told him she’d be voting for Hillary when she was older,” said Ms O’Halloran. “He said he sure hoped so.”
