Amanpour and Company

>> I think we were all privileged to be where we were when we were, and privileged to do our part to get this done.

They actually had to sign the agreement, I was just the cheerleader and gave them George Mitchell which was a gift.

I think we are proud, I hope we are.

>> Prime Minister Blair, this was something that wrecked many British governments before yours.

>> I was lucky in having a group of people in Northern Ireland, leaders who were prepared to lead.

I had an Irish Prime Minister that had -- we were coming to the end of the 20th century, you needed people with that 21st century mentality, and he had that.

President Clinton was saying he was a cheerleader, but he was more than that.

He was an intervenor in crucial points.

It is one of those things, a combination of circumstances, but the individual leadership of people at that particular moment was crucial.

>> Prime Minister O'Hearn, was that mostly the alignment of the stars in terms of leadership, was also about the people on the ground?

>> The parties and people on the ground.

From our point of view to have the president of the United States and genuinely interested to stay up at night, we are a small country.

The things you don't expect.

I was just so lucky that Tony and I got on so well.

He gave an enormous amount of time.

I know he had 100 things on his list, and I realize every prime minister is busy but, when I looked at my agenda against his agenda and he was prepared to come here and spend days and weeks here, time and time again, people talk about 1998, we went on to 2007 and the same commitment you gave Tony, that was extraordinary.

>> And I ask the origin story?

President Clinton, in your campaign before the 1992 you talked about this, you said you would put all of your abilities behind trying to get peace.

Why?

Why did it matter so much?

>> I was a student at Oxford when the challenge began.

I remember what a big story it was when Bernadette was elected to parliament.

I went to Ireland a couple times while I was a student.

And I saw both the happiness and sorrow.

And, I always felt, when I started talking to Irish-Americans when I was running for resident, that we could make a positive difference if we were fair to both sides.

And, I knew that to do that, we would have to do something, it was unfair at that time, to get involved.

Our whole diplomacy was built around our special relationship with the U.K. which included staying away from Ireland.

When President Kennedy came here, he didn't talk about Northern Ireland no president ever did until I did.

They had been bombed so much.

I give a lot of credit to the Irish-Americans that urged me to do it.

And to the people in my National Security Council, especially Nancy, who is here tonight, and who work for me, who said, you may not have a lot of experience with foreign policy, but your instincts are right.

We took the heat.

Even the British ambassador had been the Chief of Staff under President Reagan and stunned the world, including me, when he endorsed me for president.

He said, you gave me this great job and now you're making it impossible for me to do it.

He I said, this is a good thing.

>> There Blair, here you are, you have come in as a labor Prime Minister for the first time.

No mandate, and you start by doing this.

You were elected in 1997, the negotiations started in that year.

Why was it so important to you?

>> There was a personal reason, actually to a degree.

Rather like the president.

My family on my mother's side, I had grown up with a very clear understanding of the troubles.

We would wait literally every morning in the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, to news on the U.K. media, acts of terrorism, destruction, death, tragic stories of the families of the victims of the troubles.

It was part of my own personal history.

But I always thought that John Beecher, my predecessor, had tried and had got somewhere, there was some stirring you could see, some possibility even though it had broken down by the time we got there.

I have often wondered whether it was just because it was straight into government and maybe, you have this feeling that everything was possible so you were prepared to give what most people thought was impossible ago.

A go.

The first speech I made as prime minister was here in N. Ireland.

Once we decided to work on it, we put a lot into it.