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“SALUTING AMBASSADOR TO IRELAND JEAN KENNEDY SMITH” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E465-E466 on March 25, 1998.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SALUTING AMBASSADOR TO IRELAND JEAN KENNEDY SMITH
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HON. PETER T. KING
of new york
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, March 25, 1998
Mr. KING. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to salute our Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith. Ambassador Kennedy Smith has announced that she will be leaving Dublin this year, completing a remarkable diplomatic career in Ireland.
Under her leadership, the U.S. asserted its moral leadership and began to take an active role in the Irish peace process. Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith deserves much of the credit for helping to bring about the best opportunity for a just and lasting peace in Ireland in more than 75 years.
Jean Kennedy Smith is beyond all doubt the most active, dynamic and effective U.S. Ambassador in our entire history of diplomatic relations with the Republic of Ireland. She will be missed and it will be extraordinarily difficult to fill her shoes. I am proud to have worked closely with Ambassador Kennedy Smith and even more to call her my friend.
Mr. Speaker, I submit an editorial analysis of Ambassador Kennedy Smith's remarkable legacy from the Irish Voice newspaper.
Time to Rethink U.S. Embassy Role
The announcement that U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith will be leaving her post this summer brings to an end the most extraordinary chapter yet in Irish and American diplomatic relations.
She will be greatly missed, not just for her contribution to the peace process but for her overall energy and commitment to improving understanding and links between Ireland and America.
There will likely never be another ambassador like Kennedy Smith, who played such a crucial role in the Irish peace process and redefined the American/Irish diplomatic relationship in a way that has transformed that office forever.
Indeed, the major question following her departure should be whether it is now time to institutionalize what she has put in place--the acceptance that the U.S. ambassador in Dublin plays as important a role in Northern Ireland affairs as does the American envoy in London.
It has always exclusively been the purview of the London ambassador to report on and deliver assessments on Northern Ireland to the Secretary of State and the President. Just how flawed some of those assessments can be was highlighted by the recent memoirs of former U.K. ambassador Raymond Seitz, whose total involvement was to visit Northern Ireland once in a British army helicopter before sending back his
``insights.'' He refused to meet SDLP leader John Hume on that trip, which surely endeared him to moderate Nationalist supporters.
At a time when the Irish government is likely to have a larger say in the affairs of the North, it seems fitting that the U.S. ambassador in Dublin should have significant input into State Department decision making, and that it should not again revert to being the sole concern of the U.S. ambassador in Britain.
There is also a need to keep a high caliber ambassador in Dublin such as Kennedy Smith. Proximity to the President matters most in such appointments, and there were few closer than Senator Edward Kennedy and his sister to Bill Clinton.
Before Kennedy Smith the occupants of the position tended to be elderly, well-heeled gentlemen--appointed mainly in return for financial contributions--who coasted for a few years in Dublin before retirement. The notion of Dublin as a sleepy backwater took hold, encouraged no doubt by those in the State Department who viewed Northern Ireland as a problem for the London embassy to deal with.
The notoriously pro-British slant in the State Department also extended to many in their Dublin embassy, a fact which caused Kennedy Smith no amount of problems. It is time that the embassy there reflected the importance of the Irish issue to the U.S., and also that Northern Irish specialists be appointed to Dublin.
Kennedy Smith has certainly made a start on this. Despite her lack of experience on Irish issues she entered the minefield of Northern Ireland and emerged not only unscathed but triumphant. At several critical moments in the peace process--most notably when the visa issue for Gerry Adams was being debated--she showed leadership and courage and withstood the slings and arrows of her opponents, many of whom worked through the British press to malign her.
She had her share of critics in the State Department too, who saw their long undisputed hegemony over Irish issues crumble. Events and history will prove her right in that debate.
The greatest send-off she could now receive would be another visit from the President to Ireland as part of a successful conclusion to the peace process. It is the least Jean Kennedy Smith deserves after such an impressive term of office.
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