Visit shunted off US front pages

President Clinton's final trip to Northern Ireland should have been a media coup for a US leader who sees the Northern Ireland…

President Clinton's final trip to Northern Ireland should have been a media coup for a US leader who sees the Northern Ireland peace process as his major diplomatic success.

But instead, what is probably Mr Clinton's last foreign excursion as US leader was relegated mainly to the inside pages of his country's national press.

The President's timing could not have been worse.

Hours after he arrived in Dublin, the US Supreme Court ruled against Mr Clinton's Vice-President, Mr Al Gore, in the legal battle over the presidential election.

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Analysis and the flurry of commentary over Mr Gore's likely concession to republican candidate Governor George Bush shunted the President's third Irish visit off the US's front pages.

Most US papers focused on Mr Clinton's role in helping forge the Belfast Agreement and how his visit would influence attempts to salvage the stuttering peace process. Most balanced political realities with the President's obvious sentiment for Ireland. Typical was New York Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer.

"In rain, wind and under a night sky blazing with Christmas lights, President Clinton came to Ireland yesterday for the last foreign visit of his presidency. Here, he helped save lives and make peace," he wrote from Dundalk.

"The country that looked back at him had a million different faces - from aproned housewives huddled in row house doorways and hardhats sitting on a crane to a little Irish-African girl in dreadlocks singing Danny Boy and a small town that stayed up past its bedtime. Everywhere he looked, he saw smiles."

The Boston Globe carried a report from its Ireland correspondent on the front page, and inside an editorial praising the President's role and calling for compromise.

"Bill Clinton should not have to play the peacemaker on his third and last visit as President to Northern Ireland. The people of Ulster, especially members of the Ulster Unionist Party, need to take control of their own destiny by unequivocally supporting the Good Friday peace agreement," the Globe editors wrote.

"British and Irish leaders are trying to devise a makeshift agreement to deal with Ulster Unionist complaints. Clinton, who has made Irish peacemaking a priority, deserves better. When he visits the North next, as a private citizen, he ought to be greeted by a people unambiguously at peace with each other."

Other editorial columns were less favourable. The right-leaning Washington Times commented on a possible role for Mr Clinton in the North's future.

"President Clinton is in Northern Ireland today for a `thank you' tour. Unfortunately, the peace process he has sponsored there, like so many others, is currently in shambles," the paper wrote.

"If indeed Mr Clinton is ready to take on a role as `guardian of the Northern Ireland peace process' after he leaves office - as his aides indicated in a Financial Times report - he may need to retire in Belfast instead of New York. Only the people of Northern Ireland can solve this problem; it was they who voted against violence and for peace in Ulster."