Bertie Ahern ‘had the kind of BS I always wished I had’, says Bill Clinton

On the stage stood three friends – Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern – their arms around one another, as the audience gave them a standing ovation.

As US president, UK prime minister and taoiseach respectively, the three played a key role in the talks leading to the Belfast Agreement which, 25 years on, is being marked this week with a three-day conference at Queen’s University.

The panel discussion between them, chaired by then first lady Hillary Clinton – now the university’s chancellor – was a fitting climax to the first day’s events.

As they shared anecdotes about the “terrible” Castle Buildings, slipping notes under doors and 4am phone calls, it was a rare opportunity for those present to hear the behind-the-scenes story of the agreement from a trio of its most high-profile players, and to witness first-hand their empathy for Northern Ireland and its people, and the friendship it forged between them.

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[ Belfast Agreement conference at Queen's University - as it happened ]

“Bertie had the kind of BS that I always wished I had,” said Clinton to laughs and applause. “I want to be Bertie when I grow up.”

Blair paid tribute to Ahern, saying he had “always wanted to say thank you properly” for his ability to shrug off people who gave him abuse during the talks. Ahern, for his part, praised Blair for “some of those decisions, in the last 36 hours… they were huge decisions, they brought peace, and you had to call them and they were big calls”.

Of that last final week, said Blair, it was a “rollercoaster” with everyone getting “a few hours sleep the whole time” but this led to a “strange collective spirit that said, at the end of this, we can’t go out there and say, ‘anyway, it didn’t work’, because the whole of the world’s media were by then camped outside”.

In the worst of times, “when things were really really grim”, the then northern secretary, Mo Mowlam, would step in. “She’d say to me, ‘you’re really depressed aren’t you… time for the Women’s Coalition!’”

“The last week was horrible for me because I was so full of anticipation,” said Bill Clinton, but the talks process “involved so much time, so much effort and was done with so much respect for people across the political spectrum that I thought, in the end, these people wouldn’t walk away”.

[ Video exhibition of Belfast Agreement negotiators opens at Ulster University ]

[ Ahern, Clinton and Blair to reflect on their role as guarantors of Belfast Agreement at major conference ]

Before they stood to leave, Clinton asked others to do the same, appealing to “all the people who are here who had any part in that peace business then to stand up, because a lot of them survive and they’re here”. In the crowd, they stood, and were acknowledged: among them Mark Durkan, Lord John Alderdice, Liz O’Donnell and Daphne Trimble.

Earlier in the day, the talks chairman, Senator George Mitchell, spoke of how, on the evening the agreement was signed, he said it would take other leaders in the future to safeguard and extend what had been achieved.

It fell to Blair to end with a similar appeal. “We know that Northern Ireland is a much better place than it was before the Good Friday [Belfast] Agreement. The only thing I would say to today’s leaders is, I think, when you stand back and you reflect, you know in your heart of hearts what the right thing to do is, and you can just get on and do it.”