Progress depends on IRA - Clinton

There is no viable alternative to the Belfast Agreement, but any hope of renewed progress depends on movement by the IRA, the former US president Bill Clinton has said.

Mr Clinton was speaking in Co Dublin last night, where he gave the keynote speech at an event to raise funds for a suicide prevention programme. Asked about the Rev Ian Paisley's claim that the agreement was dead, he said he hoped the DUP leader was wrong: "The move is in the IRA's court now. If they were to give up arms and criminality unambiguously, I think it would put a lot of pressure on Mr Paisley and others."

The Belfast Agreement enshrined all the important principles, he added, the most important of which was self-government: "I don't think the Rev Paisley has ever asked for continuing rule from Westminster. So I would hope it's still alive and can be revived."

The Taoiseach and political leaders north and south were among the 1,000-strong attendance at the Citywest Hotel for a dinner expected to raise €500,000 for RehabCare's suicide prevention programme. The organisation says the initiative will cost €1.3 million to operate in its first year.

Mr Clinton told guests he had a very personal interest in the subject, dating from his time as a student at Oxford when his room-mate - "a person I admired beyond my ability to say" - took his own life.

He had always wondered if there was anything he could have done to stop it, as the loved ones of all suicide victims wonder: "It's 34 years since my friend killed himself and, every year on his anniversary, I ask myself the same question." In more recent years, while he was president, a lifelong friend of his - "who was under enormous and completely false attack from the opposition press" - had also taken his life, and the anniversary of his death now provoked similar thoughts.

But the former president saw a difference between suicides by adults and by younger people. In remarks to reporters, he said that, as governor of Arkansas, he had experienced a "big rash of childrens' suicide" and had had to try and deal with it.

"With adult suicide, there are often family causes, genetic involvement, and a lot of complicating factors. When children kill themselves, it's often because of societal causes, so it can be turned around."

Mr Clinton said the work of RehabCare was an example of one of the three most-important developments in the world during the last 15 years, a period that coincided with his presidency. For the first time in human history, the 1990s saw a majority of the world's peoples ruled by elective democracies. Simultaneously, the development of the internet had given individuals "unprecedented political power", even in countries like China.

But the greatest development of all was the "explosion across the globe" of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), of which RehabCare was typical. The Asian tsunami had highlighted the huge role NGOs now play and the trust the public places in them. Citing the 500,000 children who died last year from lack of Aids medicine, he said there were "a lot of holes in the fabric of our common humanity".

One of his personal aims now was "to get to the point where I devote myself to this [ global Aids pandemic work] and nothing else," he said.