The four Nobel Peace Price winners who emerged out of the struggle to find a peaceful settlement in the North came together yesterday in a plea for peace across the world.
The former SDLP and Ulster Unionist Party leaders, John Hume and Lord Trimble respectively, joined the leaders of the North's Peace People movement of the 1970s, Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Betty Williams, at Europe Day celebrations in Brussels.
They were among a dozen Nobel laureates invited to speak at the European Parliament to mark the EU's 50th anniversary.
Mr Hume said the same principles used to end violent conflict in the "300-year quarrel" over Northern Ireland could be used to end war elsewhere - respect for diversity, the establishment of democratic institutions and a social "healing process".
He said his time as a Euro MP had inspired him to work for peace, adding: "We are now in a new millennium and the US and the EU should come together to create a world without war."
Lord Trimble, who was joint winner with Mr Hume of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998, told the special session: "Now that the position in Northern Ireland is, in my view, firmly and finally settled, we can join in this celebration without embarrassment."
He said Europe had enjoyed unprecedented peace and prosperity for 50 years but it should now be wary of building "a world of competing blocs".
Ms Corrigan Maguire praised EU solidarity with the "Northern Ireland struggle", adding: "This is a day for celebration because we are on our way to peace.
"Paramilitarism, armed struggle and terrorism do not solve deep ethnic and political problems.
That message applies for people in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Asian countries and everywhere else."
She criticised European and American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, saying: "The London, Dublin and Washington governments did not drop a bomb on us [in Northern Ireland] when we were struggling, so why should they drop a bomb on Afghanistan and Iraq when they are struggling with the same problems? There are double standards going on."
Ms Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Ms Corrigan Maguire in 1976 for their campaign against violence in the North, told MEPs it was time to stop using the name of religion as a reason to "maim and destroy".