History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

It was an inspired gesture by Seamus Mallon to quote the above lines from the African-American poet, Maya Angelou, during his speech at the Waterfront.

The poet herself had recited them at Bill Clinton's inauguration on January 20th, 1993. Now Mallon was quoting them in the context of the US President's visit to Omagh and Armagh later in the day, where, he told Mr Clinton: "When you speak to people on the street you will see pain in their eyes."

The past cannot be rewritten but it does not have to be repeated - that was Mallon's message. In a sensitively-written passage he told the President that the "wrenching pain" could only be fathomed by those who had suffered most. But in the faces of those ordinary people, victims of the August 15th bomb and the violence of the past 30 years, Mr Clinton would also see "a readiness to face history with a courage which will touch you, just as it has inspired us."

Some of Clinton's friends in the audience may have reflected, a little sadly, that this was in all probability his last visit to the North as President. He is not the same man we met in 1995: the superstar's feet of clay have become evident. But Ireland will probably always be the one ineradicable bright spot on his record: like the old song, Clinton can say, "They can't take that away from me."

In many ways, the peace process has been Clinton-driven. All politicians are actors these days, but the President's emotion seemed unfeigned as Tony Blair paid heartfelt tribute to his role in brokering the Belfast Agreement.

There was the physical commitment: Blair recalled that no call was left unmade, no step untaken. But there was also his detailed knowledge and understanding of the North. In a memorable phrase which also summed up the essence of the Northern conflict, Blair paid tribute to the President's grasp of "the subtlety of the competing claims for justice".

Clinton mouthed "thank-yous" as the Prime Minister told him: "There's no President of the USA that has done more for peace in Northern Ireland than you."

Even his enemies could hardly dispute that Clinton has, according to his lights, "gone the extra mile" for the peace process. Some say it was a move to attract the Irish-American vote but earlier yesterday a commentator in Washington pointed out on radio that most Americans knew little and cared less about the conflict here.

The one sour note, which provided the main talking-point in the Waterfront lobby afterwards, came with David Trimble's pointed comments on the alleged past, evolving present and possible future of the republicans in the audience.

Looking in the direction of Sinn Fein representatives, such as Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, he presented an olive branch wrapped in barbed wire. In essence he appeared to be saying: I thoroughly disapprove of what you were but I acknowledge that people can change and if I am convinced the transformation is genuine, then I will meet you and we will work together.

For Adams, it must have been reminiscent of the night he sat in a massive hall in Washington and listened to the then-Taoiseach, John Bruton, pleading in a very direct way for the republican movement to turn away from violence. They still talk about that night in Iveagh House, which is clearly not seen as a high point in the history of Irish diplomacy.

The dogs in the street - an unusually well-informed breed in Northern Ireland - have it that Trimble and Adams will meet in a bilateral or trilateral, probably next Tuesday. But republicans felt they were being talked down to and privately there were mutterings that only so much of this "aggressiveness and taunting stuff" could be accepted, that republicans had a constituency, too, and if Trimble was out to wreck the possibility of a rapprochement then he might very well succeed.

The republican view of Trimble is at least as jaundiced as his view of republicans. Republicans say the First Minister has had to be "dragged, pulled, pushed and persuaded" every step of the way in the peace process and, as far as they are concerned, he has never taken a positive initiative of his own. Trimble's view, on the other hand, could be gauged from his remarks at the Waterfront, where he spoke of the "reconstruction" of those who were previously associated with Omagh-type violence and who were now "crossing the bridge from terror to democracy".

Senior colleagues of Trimble's, however, regarded his remarks as "balanced". Certainly the harsh tone will do much to avert or at least blunt the criticism from his opponents inside the party, although it is unlikely to silence Dr Paisley. While it may exasperate republicans and even mainstream nationalists, Trimble always covers his right flank because that's where the biggest political threat comes from.

Although his straight talking to republicans attracted most attention, there was a phrase in Trimble's speech that one was not used to hearing from unionist leaders and spokesmen. He believed the Assembly could be "a pluralist parliament for a pluralist people". In a week full of echoes, with Seamus Mallon quoting the presidential inauguration poem and Tony Blair paraphrasing Gerry Adams's "finished, done with and gone" remark about the Northern conflict, here was another pungent reverberation.

Remember all those dark, dank decades of bitter exclusion when Northern nationalists mulled over Sir James Craig's statement that Stormont and Northern Ireland were "a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state"? Here was Craig's successor seeming to offer a new dispensation, although as yesterday proved yet again, rocky is the road that lies ahead.