"President Clinton has been named as the recipient of this ear's Tipperary International Peace Award. The Tipperary Peace Convention Committee selected the US President for his role in bringing "peace and political stability in Northern Ireland and throughout the world."

We know of no other way in which to respond to the news that this committee has selected United States President Bill Clinton for his role in bringing "peace and political stability in Northern Ireland and throughout the world."

President Clinton is the person responsible for the deaths of countless men, women, and children in Iraq and Serbia from U.S. bombing. He is preparing to sharply increase the U.S. military presence in Columbia to bolster that governments ongoing repression of its citizens. He continues to rain bombs on Vieques in Puerto Rico despite the mass demonstration of the Puerto Rican people of their opposition. For the past eight years he has been the leader of the nation which leads the forces of imperialism worldwide. Imperialism is not a source of either peace or stability in the world today.

Under Clinton's administration, while Irish republican and republican socialist prisoners were being released from prisons throughout the island of Ireland, Irish republican and republican socialist prisoners in the United States continued, and in some cases still continue, to face incarceration and legal efforts to deport them.

Clinton has done little to alter the historic alliance between the United States and Britain, which has long bound the two nations as the closest of international allies. It is not possible, given the nature of that alliance, for any American President to intervene in Irish affairs as a neutral party and it is not desirable for any American President to intervene in Irish affairs so long as the United States remains the leading imperialist power in the world.

The peace that President Clinton offers to Irish republicans and republican socialists is the peace of the grave and the surrender of the national liberation forces to continued British occupation of north-eastern Ireland. What President Clinton offers as stability is a pacified Ireland open to exploitation by American multinational corporations.

The destiny of the Irish people is a decision for the Irish people themselves. It is not aided nor enhanced by the participation of the American government, nor for that matter is it a subject that the British government has a right to be party to. The overwhelming majority of Ireland's people are members of the working class and it is they who should determine the course of Irish history. It is they who have suffered most from the violence that has marked the past thirty years of Irish history and it is they who can best determine how that violence can be concluded.

The American President has no desire to bring real social justice to the people of Ireland and without justice there can be no peace.

The media has broadly commented on President Clinton's desire to establish his place in history. The Irish people should not be seen as a vehicle for President Clinton's ego, but as a sovereign people with the right to determine their own future. President Clinton already has his legacy . . . it is a blue dress hanging in someone's closet.