Northern Ireland

William J. Flynn

Project Director

Besides convincing President Bill Clinton to pressure the State Department to grant a 48-hour visa to Gerry Adams (the president of Sinn Fein), the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, in the person of its chairman, William J. Flynn, committed itself to providing an ongoing forum for the parties to the deadly struggle in Northern Ireland (republicans and nationalists, loyalists and unionists) to resolve what the NCAFP maintained were not intractable but soluble problems. The Committee fulfilled that commitment despite several shattered ceasefires and protracted and seemingly fruitless negotiations: the Northern Ireland Peace Initiative culminated in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and the establishment of the first power-sharing government in the North.