Clinton calls for political action on sticking points in North peace process

Former US president Bill Clinton has expressed concern that many of the sticking points holding back the North’s peace process when he left power more than a decade ago are still unresolved.

Mr Clinton used his first visit to the Republic for two years to urge political leaders to do more to deal with issues such as the disappeared and tensions over parades.

In Dublin to boost a philanthropic drive for companies and individuals to donate 1% of their salary or time to good causes, Mr Clinton said he was “in two minds” about the legacy of the peace process he played a key role in during the 1990s.

“On balance it’s been a great thing and it withstood this terrible financial crash which wreaked misery both in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland and could have caused the whole thing to come apart, and it didn’t; the major players kept their guns down,” he told RTÉ.

“On the other hand it’s striking to me a lot of the unresolved issues are what they were when I left office.

“We have to use coming out of this crisis as a reason to integrate the Irish more and integrate them more in a positive way with the United Kingdom.”

Mr Clinton said the issue of the disappeared was a particular concern as he urged those in the know to clear up what happened to “people still on everybody’s list”.

In a warning to political leaders, Mr Clinton said: “They should be troubled by the fact that the same issues that held us up before are still eating at people when I hoped by this time they would wake up every day in a new world.”

The ex-president, who left the White House in 2001, remained coy about his wife Hillary’s ambition to run for the presidency in 2016. “We hope we live to see a woman president, but that doesn’t mean she has decided to run.”

Mr Clinton said he wanted Ireland to lead the way in the 1% drive and act as an example to other countries to follow.

He said that Ireland’s had been the first national government to get behind his anti-HIV drive in the developing world.

Despite controversy engulfing Taoiseach Enda Kenny after he posed for a group picture in New York with media mogul Denis O’Brien after he had been the subject of negative findings by a tribunal, Mr Clinton thanked the tycoon for inviting him to the philanthropic event last night.

Mr Clinton met with the Taoiseach before going on to deliver the Ray Murphy Memorial lecture organised by Philanthropy Ireland in which he praised Ireland’s culture of giving which he said included a long standing commitment to UN peace keeping efforts.

Mr Clinton said global warming needed to be taken seriously as he did not want to see “another New Orleans” in Ireland.