United States - "Three Men and a Maybe" was how Rupert Murdoch's New York Post announced the Northern Ireland Agreement above a photograph of Mr Ahern, Mr Tony Blair and Senator George Mitchell, writes Michael Foley in New York. The Post's cautious welcome was echoed throughout the US media.
The New York Times on Saturday gave full page-one treatment to the event, and two inside pages: "Irish Talks produce accord to stop decades of bloodshed with sharing of Ulster power". Lower down the front page it showed its caution with a headline - "Now the hard part: making it work".
Germany - Germany's Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, welcomed the agreement as a historic accord that would deprive those who use violence of nourishment for their cause, writes Denis Staunton in Berlin.
"This document opens the door to a peaceful, just, and lasting end to the conflict which cost over 3,200 lives in the past 30 years. This opens a new chapter in the history of Northern Ireland," he said.
In an editorial entitled "The Irish Miracle", the liberal Berliner Zeitung said that the peace process had obliged all the parties involved to abandon some deeply held prejudices and to think in new, more subtle ways. But the paper warned that the path to lasting peace is still fraught with danger and that fringe terrorist groups are likely to do all they can to wreck the accord. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine cautioned its readers against comparing the Northern Ireland peace process with German reunification.
The New York Daily News, true to its tradition of snappy headlines and large pictures, had a picture of Mr Blair and Mr Ahern shaking hands with the single word "Deal!" The Washington Post simply announced: "Historic promise brings peace in Northern Ireland". "Clinton's support played major part in clinching deal", said the Post.
Australia - The Australian government has urged the people of Northern Ireland and the Republic to make the Northern Ireland Agreement work.
"This historic achievement holds out the prospect for an end to the bitter sectarian strife which has divided and afflicted the people of Northern Ireland for so many decades," said the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard. "The Australian government urges all the parties and the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland to seize this opportunity to ensure a just and lasting settlement, to put behind them the years of violence and despair and to build a future of peace and tolerance for their children."
Israel - The "historic peace deal in Ireland", as the Israeli media has been describing it, hit the normally parochial front pages of Israel's national newspapers yesterday morning - sidelining even the customary daily despatches concerning the deadlocked peace process with the Palestinians and the threat of extremist violence, writes David Horovitz in Jerusalem.
Since Israelis on both the left and the right profess to truly seek peace in their own fractious region, the accord is receiving almost unanimous acclaim here. But commentators have hurried on to explain why it could never work here.
Geula Cohen, a right-wing firebrand who spends much of her time in the hardline West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, overlooking the city of Hebron, for example, expressed delight that an objective solution had been found in Northern Ireland but then continued, in a brief article in the tabloid Yediot Ahronot: "We [Israel] can't capitulate to the Arabs."
Italy - The Italian Prime Minister, Mr Romano Prodi, was among the first European leaders to react to news of the agreement, writes Paddy Agnew in Rome. "The sustained actions of the British and Irish governments and of all the parties involved in the talks made this agreement possible, proving one more time the superiority of dialogue, a dialogue that has proved all the more effective because it has taken place in a context of strong European co-operation."
The Italian press also warmly welcomed the 11th-hour deal. "Peace in Northern Ireland" was the main front-page headline in Saturday's Milan daily, Corriere Della Sera, while the Turin daily La Stampa led its front page with "Ulster, Peace after 29 Years of Bloodshed", a headline echoed by Rome daily, La Reppublica with "Ulster, Peace after 30 Years".
Television and radio news bulletins on Friday night led with news of the agreement while Italy's major newspapers gave extensive coverage to the nature of the deal.
Britain - The British press has turned its attention from the minutiae of the negotiations to the potential for difficulties, writes Rachel Donnelly, in London.
"Now the real difficulties begin," the Sunday Telegraph observed yesterday. Placing the agreement in the broader context of Labour's constitutional revolution, its editorial warned that the apparent "a la carte" arrangement for Northern Ireland might lead to unstable democracy.
The Sunday Times devoted a section to the role of Mr Trimble in the talks and the difficulties he might encounter from a "suspicious" unionist community.
The Observer warned that the spectre of the Sunningdale agreement in 1973 provided an "awful reminder" of what might yet happen but, ultimately, the people of Northern Ireland would be the ones to make the peace work.
After praising Mr Blair and Mr Ahern, the Mail on Sunday condemned the "weasel words" of Mr Adams on decommissioning.
South Africa - The Irish peace settlement is the product of the yearning of ordinary people for an end the conflict which has disrupted their lives for decades, South Africa's mass circulation Sunday Times said in an editorial yesterday, writes Patrick Laurence in Johannesburg. It was the "wish for peace by the people" that kept the politicians at the negotiating table, the newspaper stated, noting that the Irish peace accord - like the South African peace agreement of 1993 - showed there is "still a role for political leadership that goes beyond sectarian, racial or ideological interests".
Prof Tom Lodge, of the University of the Witwatersrand, identified two factors which made settlement easier in South Africa than Ireland: the absence of a dispute of boundaries and the emergence of two men capable of persuading the bulk of the South African population of the need for a compromise agreement, President Nelson Mandela and former President F.W. de Klerk.