Mr. Jonathan Powell:

I thank the Senator for those questions because I wanted the opportunity to say that the people who took the real risks and deserved real credit for what happened are the politicians from Northern Ireland and not Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern or anyone else. It was them. I believe John Hume and David Trimble deserve their Nobel Peace Prize because in the end what we and the Irish Government were doing was trying to facilitate between the different sides. In particular, John Hume demonstrated real political bravery in reaching out to Gerry Adams at an early stage and being excoriated for it at the time. That should be well remembered by future generations for what he did.

On David Trimble, we have had some conversations over the years about this and he always says he was appalled that I was surprised that he was going to be brave in making peace. I was surprised because he got his job by being on the radical end of the party and yet when he got it he was determined to make peace, particularly around the time of Drumcree. He spoke up when that unfortunate family was burned to death and I thought he was very brave. I thought he was committed to making peace, which was fundamentally important.

I add to this Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who led their movement, at great personal risk, into making peace. They also deserve an enormous amount of credit. There were substantial politicians and political leaders. Ian Paisley was not the sort of politician who would succeed in British politics but after he came back from his illness in 2004, he came back a rather different man. He told us he wanted to finish his life as "Dr. Yes" and not "Dr. No". He did not suddenly fold and make concessions but he really tried to get to peace, even when the rest of his party did not seem that keen on it. He, too, posthumously deserves an enormous amount of credit being given to him.

It is very important the British and Irish Governments could work so closely together but the real credit goes to those politicians. Northern Ireland was very lucky to have those politicians at that time.

On the role of the US Administration, I mentioned briefly that the role played by Bill Clinton was crucial from an early stage in sending out George Mitchell, as opposed to an economic envoy. George looked at the question of decommissioning and came up with the Mitchell principles, as well as chairing the talks. We would not have done it without that and there is no way there would have been a successful peace process without that happening.

Bill Clinton himself played a role in the three days around Good Friday on the phone, staying up all night and cajoling people. I particularly remember his call to the unionist leadership and I came down to tell them it was happening. That was the Ulster Unionist Party. There were also subsequent visits in trying to ensure the process worked. I include Hillary as well as Bill Clinton and both were really committed to the Northern Ireland peace process.

We could go back even further because when I was at the British embassy in Washington, my job was to stop Gerry Adams getting a visa to go to the US before a ceasefire. I thought I had it covered because I had the CIA, the State Department, the FBI and everyone else saying "No" but then at the last minute Senator Ted Kennedy did an end run on me through Nancy Soderberg to Bill Clinton and got him a visa. In retrospect, it was exactly the right thing to do; what Bill Clinton did was to give political hope. It was a very wise, albeit quite costly, decision in a political sense. John Major was not very happy and would not speak to him for three days afterwards. Maybe we could have made peace without the American role but it made it a heck of a lot easier and much more likely to succeed with the role played by Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and George Mitchell, as well as many other American officials.