The Belfast Agreement can be a model for ending conflicts in other parts of the world, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, has told the UN General Assembly. But he warned that the agreement on its own does not guarantee peace.
It was a deeply significant and even emotional experience for Mr Andrews to be the first Irish Foreign Minister in 29 years to be able to tell the UN General Assembly that Northern Ireland was at peace.
Since 1969, when Dr Patrick Hillery as minister for foreign affairs addressed the UN against a background of sectarian violence and killings, a report on Ireland's efforts to broker peace in Northern Ireland has become an annual tradition.
Yesterday Mr Andrews announced with pride that with the agreement, "we have begun the long walk out of the dark night of division and conflict into the bright sunlight of partnership and harmony".
Earlier the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, congratulated Mr Andrews on the success of the agreement and said he was looking forward to visiting Ireland. He also noted that President Clinton had opened his UN address on Monday by hailing the Northern peace breakthrough.
Mr Andrews spoke of Ireland's international role in disarmament, human rights, peacekeeping, development co-operation and reform of the UN and the Security Council. He put in a modest plug for Ireland's candidature for a seat in 2001-2002 on the Security Council. Ireland, which was last on the council in 1982, would play its traditional "bridge-building role" if elected, he said.
Today the Minister travels to Washington for meetings at the White House and on Capitol Hill.
In the section of his speech devoted to Northern Ireland, Mr Andrews said: "Never again may the name of the people be invoked as a basis for the shedding of blood in Ireland. From now on it is manifest that the only legitimate force is the force of reason and persuasion."
But he warned that institution-building would not be enough.
"If new politics is to work, we must seek to develop, on the basis of mutual respect, new ways of listening to each other. New ways of talking to each other. New ways of understanding each other. And critically, new ways of working together."
He said difficulties that would arise from time to time must be approached "precisely in this spirit of the new politics", including at present those relating to the establishment of the Shadow Executive in Northern Ireland and to decommissioning.