Documents / Official release
This is a White House Office of the Press Secretary transcript of remarks by President Clinton and the First Lady at the lighting of the Christmas tree at Belfast City Hall, Northern Ireland, on November 30, 1995. It was forwarded by email on August 28, 1998. Most of the speech is about the Northern Ireland peace process and children's letters. Answering a letter from a 13-year-old named Ryan, the President jokes that as far as he knows no alien spacecraft crashed in Roswell in 1947.
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million calls. The response left no doubt that all across Northern Ireland the desire for peace was becoming a demand. I am honored to announce today that those same two newspapers, the Newsletter and the Irish News, have established the President's Prize, an annual award to those at the grass-roots level who have contributed inost to peace and reconciliation. The honorees will travel to the United States to exchange experiences on the issues we share, including community relations and conflict resolution. We have a lot to learn from on another. The President's Prize will underscore that Northern Ireland's two traditions have a common interest in peace. . As you know -- and as the First Lady 'said -- I have received thousands of letter·s from school children all over your remarkable land telling me what peace means to them. They poured in from villages and cities, from Catholic and Protestant communities, from mixed schools, primary schools, from schools for.· children with special needs. All the letters in their own way were truly wonderful for their honesty, their simple ·wisdom and their passion. Many of .~ - .' . children showed tremendous pride in their homeland, in its beauty and its true nature. I congratulate the winners. They were wonderful and I loved hearing their letters. But let me tell you about another couple I received. Eleven-year-old Keith from Carrickfergus wrote: "Please tell everyone in America that we're not always fighting here, and that it's only a small number of people who make the trouble." . Like many of the children, Keith did not identify himself as Protestant or Catholic, and did not distinguish between the sources ofthe violence. So many children told me of loved ones they have lost, of lives disrupted and opportunities. forsaken and families forced to move. Yet, they showed remarkable . courage and strength and a commitment t~ overcome the past. As 14-year-old Sharon of County Armagh wrote: "Both sides have been hurt. Both sides must . forgive." Despite the extraordinary hardships so many of these children have faced, their
Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 6 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.