While the beltway villagers wallow in their insipid pettiness ridiculing the President's Nobel Peace Prize, our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been out there carrying out this administration's fine-tuned diplomacy work without flashiness. Over the weekend she was present along with EU and Swiss officials as Turkey and Armenia after more than 90 years of enmity, overcame a last minute snag and signed a historic Agreement to normalize Diplomatic Relations between the two countries.
And more importantly, even after peace deals are brokered, they must be nurtured and followed through particularly when they hit rough patches. So today, in an effort to lend our support to sustaining the health of the Northern Ireland Peace Accord negotiated under the tenure of President Bill Clinton, our Top Diplomat addressed the Northern Ireland Assembly.
More after the jump;
Turkey-Armenia Peace Agreement Video (with English subtitles)
The Northern Ireland peace deal had recently hit a snag between Irish Catholic and Protestant principals over how to transfer police and justice administrative powers from the British government to Belfast. Additionally, the personal investment of the Clintons in the peace Process gave SOS Hillary Clinton credibility to address the Assembly today without seeming to be "imposing" US will on a delicate situation.
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According to First Protestant Minister Peter Robinson, Sec. Hillary Clinton:
has been a true friend to all of us going back over 15 years, and her continued intellectual and emotional and political engagement with us is something that has been to our enormous benefit over all of that time.
He also said of her address, that it was quite a feat:
To make any speech in the Northern Ireland assembly and no one walks out, that’s an achievement,
To help solidify US involvement in the Peace Process in northern Ireland, US economic envoy to Northern Ireland Declan Kelly convened an economic roundtable.
After the visit to Northern Ireland, sec. Clinton left for Moscow where she is slated to meet President Dimitri Medvedev and Foreign Minister Lavrov for talks on Iran and nuclear disarmament.
So over a three-day weekend, one peace agreement between Turkey and Armenia, or diplomatic repairwork in Northern Ireland, or following up on young diplomatic seeds planted with Russia, there is more important news than Politico wondering whether this White House uses an "unusually high" level of cuss words in their language.