Nobel winner: Hillary Clinton's 'silly' Irish peace claims

Telegraph, UK, March 8, 2008

By Toby Harnden in Washington

Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.

Full coverage of the US Elections 2008 David Trimble: Hillary Clinton mere "cheerleader" in Ireland Hillary Clinton with the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness after their meeting in Washington last year "I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets" during elections. "She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player." Mrs Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am. Continued . . .