GOVERNOR George Pataki of New York State has linked the President's visit with his signing of a Bill which will make the Famine an obligatory subject in the state's schools. Mrs Robinson has made the Famine and its lessons for today a theme of her speeches during her US visit.
The Governor signed the Bill immediately after a breakfast held in the President's honour at which she spoke of how the commemoration of the Famine was being used to reshape and draw the Irish diaspora around the world closer together.
She also referred briefly to the IRA bombs at Lisburn, saying they were "a very real setback" to building peace in, Northern Ireland but should also act as "an incentive to dig deeper" to achieve a lasting peace.
Governor Pataki, whose maternal grandmother was an illegal Irish immigrant from Co Louth, described the Famine as an act of genocide by the then British administration.
"History teaches us the Great Irish Hunger was not the result of a massive failure of the Irish potato crop but rather was the result of a deliberate campaign by the British to deny the Irish people the food they needed to survive," he said.
The new law will mean that all students in New York State who take obligatory courses in human rights issues will now add the study of the causes of the Irish Famine to subjects such as genocide, slavery and the Holocaust. New York is the first state to pass such a law.
Mrs Robinson prefers to put more emphasis on the lessons to be learned today from the Famine than on its genocidal aspect. She told the attendance of New York politicians and businessmen that it was necessary to examine the Famine "honestly and rigorously" but then relate it to conditions today in countries where children are dying for lack of clean water.
Assemblyman Joseph Crowley, who sponsored the legislation, said it was "important that our students be educated as to the factual causes of one of the greatest calamities of humankind. The law would stand as a living memorial to all those who suffered and died during An Gorta Mor, or Ireland's Great Hunger".
He said that "hunger is still used as a tool of subjugation, as a means of keeping people down in places like Somalia, Ethiopia and China".
Mr Crowley said he had been asked by the New York Post to pose for a picture holding a sack of potatoes to illustrate the new Famine teaching law, but he had refused. He was then asked to pose holding one potato but again refused as this was demeaning the Famine.
Opponents of the measure are quoted as saying that it will be an additional burden for schools that already cannot adequately educate children in academic basics.
The Olympic champion swimmer, Michelle Smith, was also a guest at the breakfast. She later received an award at the 1996 American Celtic Ball sponsored by the Ireland Chamber of Commerce in the United States.
Mrs Robinson flew back to Dublin last night.