Hillary: We defied White House to stay at the ‘most bombed hotel’
Clinton recalls first US peace trip to Belfast & Europa stance
HILLARY Clinton said she and her husband Bill defied advice from the White House during their first trip to Northern Ireland and stayed at the world’s most bombed hotel.
The former US First Lady and Secretary of State visited Belfast with then-president Bill Clinton in November 1995 to lend their support for an end to the Troubles and to encourage a peace agreement.
Bill made history by becoming the first sitting US President to visit Northern Ireland.
They stayed at the Europa, which is known as the world’s most bombed hotel, having been targeted 33 times between 1970 and 1994.
Mrs Clinton said: “The first time I went to Northern Ireland was in 1995 with my husband to see whether and to sort of test the waters whether there was any appetite for the United States playing a role in trying to bring the parties together for some negotiation.
COURAGE
“And we had the great delight and honour of turning on the Christmas tree lights at the City Hall in Belfast in front of an absolutely enormous crowd.
“Hundreds of thousands of people who turned out, many with their small children on their shoulders or in their arms, which said more to me than anything could about their hopefulness.
“And we stayed in the part of the Europa Hotel that was not currently bombed and it was quite an experience to show up at the hotel we were staying in and see about half of it boarded up because it had been recently bombed.
“I knew that the White House had tried to persuade my husband to stay somewhere else.
“And he said, ‘No, we’re going to stay in the part of the Europa that’s not bombed’.
“So it was quite an introduction to Belfast and the beginning of a very important relationship, certainly in my life going forward.”
Mrs Clinton said the negotiators of the Good Friday Agreement showed strength and courage throughout the peace process.
Speaking at Women and Peacebuilding: Reflections from Northern Ireland, organised in partnership with Queen’s University Belfast, at Columbia University in New York, she said: “It’s really hard and who wants to sit in a room with people who have killed people you know or who bombed places that you remember. Who wants to do that?
“It takes an extraordinary amount of not just personal fortitude, but a
Who wants to sit in a room with people who have killed people you know HILLARY CLINTON ON EARLY NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE
sense of courage to take that risk.
“George Mitchell once said that, like for the first year, if he could get people in the same room, that was a miracle, and then they wouldn’t talk to each other. And if they said anything, he had to repeat it. They wouldn’t hear it from the other side.”
Mrs Clinton also said late First Minister Ian Paisley, of the Democratic
Unionist Party, and Deputy First Minister Martin Mcguinness, of Sinn Fein, became friends after they agreed to share power in 2007.
US President George Bush hosted the then leaders at the White House in December that year.
Mrs Clinton said: “They [Ian Paisley and Martin Mcguinness] came on a trip to the United States and it was truly like the Ian and Martin Show. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“The two of them were finishing each others’ sentences and telling jokes. It was impossible to imagine that just a few years before.”
Mrs Clinton added: “We all need to be encouraged and we need to be reassured but we also need to be challenged that there are many more things we all could be doing to try to make a difference.”