Irish Leader Discusses Peace

Speaking hours after the announcement Friday of the first Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Northern Ireland since 1976, Irish President Mary McAleese stressed the need to respect individual rights in an address before a packed ARCO Forum.

Earlier in the day, John Hume and David Trimble, the leaders of Northern Ireland's largest Roman Catholic and Protestant parties, respectively, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in the April 10 Northern Ireland Good Friday peace agreement.

While Institute of Politics Director Alan K. Simpson praised the prize decision, McAleese focused on the ways a country can protect free speech while still ensuring a civil society.

"We need to show emphatically that the right to say something does not mean that the thing said is right," she said.

McAleese emphasized the need to educate society through an open dialogue, using her upbringing in Northern Ireland as an example of the risks of living in a homogenous environment.

"I grew up in Belfast cheek by jowl with Orange culture...I learned little or nothing positive about it at school and I presume that my British Protestant friends were taught nothing positive about Gaelic Irish culture," she said.

McAleese stressed that open dialogue was the linchpin of the Northern Ireland peace agreement.

In order to have such a dialogue, McAleese said both sides must move beyond asserting their competing rights.

"In a sense, this requirement, easy to state but hard to achieve, is at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement," she said.

"The Agreement sends out a clear message--the way forward is through affording each other respect and tolerance."

In the question and answer period, McAleese outlined her vision of lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

"It's a causeway we're all designed to build. We're all signed up to be the stonemasons," she said.

She stressed the need to build bridges to peace in Northern and Southern Ireland and said she hoped by the end of her presidency she could look back on peace.

"I hope at the end of those seven years, we can look back and see we built it," she said.

Conor Brady, editor of The Irish Times and moderator of the question and answer period, warned against complacency in an interview after the speech.

"I think that the peace process is still relatively fragile. It needs as much encouragement as possible from all corners."

Brady was quick to stress that the prize committee was wise not to select Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army.

"I think if Adams had received the prize, it could have caused serious problems in the Unionist Party," he said. "I think that most moderate party members in the Unionist community would find it too difficult to swallow."

Brady also said that the most important part of peace process is not disarming opponents.

"Even if all the guns were taken out, you would still have to rebuild relationships...It'd be wrong to be complacent," he said.