All America wanted to see agreement being reached in the current set of Northern Ireland negotiations, Senator Edward Kennedy said in Boston at the weekend. He said that agreement was bound to come eventually.
"It's inevitable, because there is too much goodwill in the North. There's too many of those that understand that we have to look to the future and not to the past."
The senator was speaking prior to presenting an award to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Boston-based Irish Immigration Centre, in recognition of Mr Cowen's work on behalf of emigrants and the Minister's decision to establish the Irish Abroad Unit within the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Minister paid tribute to Senator Kennedy's work as "a champion of peace" in Ireland.
On the recent talks, Senator Kennedy said: "No one said that this was going to be easy, if it was going to be easy it would have been done a long time ago. But there is serious leadership and that, I think, forms an irresistible force to move this process forward.
"I was hopeful that, with these last negotiations we would see the breakthrough. Clearly, we didn't. I'll let others comment on the reasons. But all America wants to see this process move forward according to the Good Friday Agreement and we are hopeful, as the leaders were, that there will be further progress in the late fall ."
Commenting on the peace process, Mr Cowen said the electorate would "not lightly forgive" parties in the talks if they failed to reach agreement.
"As a result of the Leeds talks, I strongly believe that we now have a genuine and early prospect of finally pursuing politics in Northern Ireland through exclusively peaceful and democratic means, and on a basis of real partnership and equality between nationalists and unionists that will lead to a transformation of politics on the island of Ireland.
"The significance of this cannot be overstated for those of us who try to build the new Ireland of tomorrow.
"The people will not lightly forgive if, having come so far, this extraordinary opportunity is let slip, and I don't believe it will," Mr Cowen said.
