All parties to the long and hate-filled conflict in Northern Ireland should make "a leap of faith" at this year's all-party talks because they have nothing to lose, President Clinton said.
As Clinton took part in a St. Patrick's Day observance at the White House, an administration official said he expected one or more high-level White House aides to meet with Irish Nationalist leader Gerry Adams away from the White House before the ally of the Irish Republican Army leaves the United States.The time and place of a meeting between U.S. officials and Adams had not been set as of Friday afternoon. Adams has been invited to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City on Saturday.
The session is designed to bolster Adams' credibility in Northern Ireland and put pressure on him to help engineer a new IRA ceasefire, but to do so without rewarding him diplomatically with a White House visit, said the official who did not want to be quoted by name.
The president, a spray of Irish shamrocks in the pocket of his coat, said that Catholic and Protestant participants in all-party talks won't be expected to check their long history of distrust at the door.
But he added: "There is nothing to be lost here by taking a leap of faith. Everybody can always go back to behaving in the terrible way they once behaved."
"If it leads to a dead end, what is to be lost in trying? Nothing. Nothing.
"That's the argument I make," Clinton said. "It is in everyone's self-interest to go forward. It is in no one's self-interest to keep their foot on the brakes of this process."