Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all I would say to them, you don't have to trust them at all. You can take these things as they come. But…”

“Well, first of all I would say to them, you don't have to trust them at all. You can take these things as they come. But I can say that the United States--that our involvement here presumes the integrity of any agreement which would be made, and that what you ought to do is to realize that all you do, as every poll shows, is weaken your case among Irish, whether they're Catholics or Protestants, every time you blow up a building and kill somebody when we can get these talks started with people representing you and your views in the talks. There's no--you don't have to all of a sudden start trusting people. You just have to show up, start, go to work, and if your representatives and people who have the same concerns that you do reach an agreement in good faith, then it will be very hard for that agreement not to be carried, first of all, because the United States has placed its good faith, if you will, in the ultimate outcome of the product and, secondly, because the whole world is looking at this. You can't go through an agreement like this, come out and have everybody say, okay, these are the following six things we're going to do, and then see it come a cropper. I mean, that's what I would say to them. I'm not asking all these people to start trusting each other and loving each other overnight. That's not what all-party talks are about. All-party talks are about everybody shows up; here's the agenda; here are the four or five items we have to resolve; you go to work on them. If you don't resolve them, you certainly haven't lost anything. If you do resolve them, you have perhaps given yourselves and everybody else a chance to walk away from a terrible way of spending your life toward a more fruitful future for your children.”