The North's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness has claimed that his joint visit to the United States with First Minister Ian Paisley has sent a powerful message to potential investors about the stability of the North's new arrangements.
Speaking in New York, where the two Ministers yesterday attended a lunch with business executives to discuss investment and tourism opportunities, Mr McGuinness described the reception they had received since the start of their visit on Monday.
"It really is amazing to watch people's faces here and to see how thrilled they are that the Ian Paisley they've seen during the course of this visit is almost a total contrast to everything that they imagined about him in the course of their lives. It is quite palpable, the level of excitement here.
"I suppose he and I being together epitomises the transformation that's taken place and I think it's also very, very clear that there's an enormous amount of goodwill among Irish America for Ian Paisley and for the decisions that he has taken in the course of recent months," he told The Irish Times.
Americans have been astonished by the apparent warmth of relations between Dr Paisley and Mr McGuinness, but the Deputy First Minister insisted that there was nothing staged about their friendliness.
"The way people saw him today is the way he is. So I think that's a tremendous credit to Ian Paisley. I obviously had an opinion of him for three decades. He probably had an even stronger opinion of myself. But the fact that we can work together and do it in a spirit of civility says something for where all of us have come from and, more than anything else, tells the public that we are serious politicians - not forgetting about the past but facing the future together.
"What is quite clear is that, if we're divided, we will be weak; if we're united, we will be strong," he said.
The two Northern politicians travel to Washington later today for meetings with congressmen, senators and administration officials before the climax of their visit on Friday, when president George Bush will welcome them to the White House. Mr McGuinness said that, like the investors they met in New York, US politicians want to be sure that the relationship at the top of the North's government is solid.
"It's almost like they want to come and see it for themselves so they can go back and say, 'I've seen it, it's working and it's not going to go back to the past'. I think people here want to be convinced that there's a new situation before us which is irreversible . . . They want to be assured and I hope that our presence here today, the sight of us working here together, tells everybody that the situation in Ireland and the North of Ireland has changed forever," he said.