`Pluck of the Irish - Ambassador Sean O hUiginn plays Washington like a harp" says the title on a highly flattering profile of our man in the US in the last edition of the Washington magazine Capital Style. He told the interviewer that rumours that he was nicknamed Dark Prince (Prince of Darkness surely?) during the Northern peace negotiations were "media nonsense" but he conceded that he was the one who often had to tell the Brits "that's a fine idea but it won't work".
For the visit by the President, Mary McAleese, this week the ambassador showed his clout by bringing together an impressive guest list for an informal lunch on Sunday on the lawn of his residence, beside the pool. Katherine Graham, owner and publisher of the Washing- ton Post and Newsweek, was there with one of her top columnists, Mary McGrory. Congressman Peter King was quizzed about whether he would come to the aid of his party and run against Hillary Clinton for the US Senate now that Mayor Rudy Giuliani is in serious health and matrimonial trouble and the Republicans are desperate.
The White House was represented by President Bill Clinton's two top advisers on the North, Jim Steinberg and Dick Norland. Jean Kennedy Smith and her sister Eunice Shriver were there, as was Terry McAuliffe, one of Clinton's top fund-raisers and a golfing companion, to whom Clinton which is to give an Irish-Americans-for-Gore award next month organised by Stella O'Leary, a fund-raiser herself for Hillary Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore.
Other guests included Martha Pope, former aide to Senator George Mitchell; US secretary of education Dick Riley, who has been campaigning for Gore and could be the next US ambassador to Ireland; labour boss, John Sweeney, head of the AFL-CIO; Bob Bennett, Clinton's lawyer in the Paula Jones lawsuit, which led to the Monica Lewinsky revelations; Jim Nicholson, chairman of the Republican Party and a key figure in the George Bush campaign.
On the artistic side were writers John McGahern, Jennifer Johnston, Theo Dorgan and artist Tony O'Malley. You could say Ambassador O hUiginn had all sides covered.