President Clinton yesterday appealed to people in Northern Ireland to give the new Assembly a chance to work and not to lose sight of the "bigger picture", whatever the outcome of tomorrow's events at Drumcree.
Speaking in Hong Kong, Mr Clinton promised to be in daily touch with party leaders in Northern Ireland over the threat of communal violence, and compared the motive behind the church burnings in Northern Ireland to the "darkest impulses" of people in the US who had attacked black churches.
Responding to a question from The Irish Times at a press conference at the end of his nine-day tour of China, the President said he felt "personally horrible" at the attacks on churches and pleaded with whoever was responsible to "take the churches off the list."
Senior White House officials travelling with the President said afterwards that Mr Clinton hoped to visit Northern Ireland in early autumn, possibly in September during a planned trip to Russia.
The President called off a trip to Ireland during the referendum campaign in May so as not to influence the outcome. On Thursday, while travelling on Air Force One from Shanghai to Guilin in southern China, Mr Clinton telephoned the North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, and the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume.
Asked about the nature of the calls, Mr Clinton replied that he had called Mr Trimble and Mr Hume "to congratulate them on the respective performances of their parties" in the recent elections.
He had assumed that Mr Trimble would be elected First Minister and that either Mr Hume or the nominee of his party, Mr Seamus Mallon, would be selected as the Deputy First Minister.
"I wanted to talk to them about what the United States could do to continue to support this process and, in particular, whether there was anything that could be done to defuse the tension surrounding the marching season and particularly the Drumcree march. We had very good long talks.
"They said they needed to get the leadership elections out of the way. They wanted to consult with Prime Minister Blair, who had been up there, and with Prime Minister Ahern, and that we would agree to be in more or less daily contact in the days running up to the marching season date in the hope that that could be done. "I think it's very important that the people of Northern Ireland give this new Assembly a chance to work. And I think it would be tragic indeed if either side felt so aggrieved by the ultimate resolution of the marching issue that they lost the bigger picture in the moment. I think that is something that must not happen.
"Obviously, I feel personally horrible about what has happened to the churches. In our country we had this round of church-burnings in the last few years, and during the civil rights days we had a number of bombings of black churches which really reflected the darkest impulses of some of our people at their worst moments.
"And I would just plead to whoever was responsible for this, for whatever reason, you need to take the churches off the list, and you need to take violence off the list."