Clinton Helps Those Who Help Themselves

If the timing of President Clinton's Moscow summit was lousy, the reverse is true of his trip to Northern Ireland. Since the shaky summer of Drumcree and the shock and sorrow of the Omagh bombing, the province appears to be very much back on the track to peace. All but one of the renegade guerrilla groups have declared a cease-fire; Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has begun to renounce violence with all the passion of a would-be Nobel laureate; and just before Clinton touched down Thursday, news came through that Unionist leader and first minister David Trimble had agreed to meet face-to-face with Adams for the very first time. You can forgive Sandy Berger some hubris on the tarmac: "This is the headline we wanted to see when we got here!" he gushed to reporters.

Not that there's much Clinton can actually achieve in his whirlwind tour, beyond meeting folks at Omagh and Armagh and having a few welcome photo-ops with party leaders. If the violence has finally abated, it did so without the President's presence. Much more important is a long-term commitment to serious economic investment in the long-troubled province, which Clinton has already promised to give. Hence the first words he uttered in Belfast were ones that he would not have dared whisper in Russia: "What can I do to help?"