World leaders pay tribute to Kennedy

DUBLIN. August 27. KAZINFORM  Nowhere outside of America has the Kennedy legacy been more deeply felt than in Ireland, where photographs of the family adorn homes and hundreds claim to be distant relations of the glittering dynasty that brought the first Roman Catholic to the White House, Kazinform cites China Daily. 

Here, Senator Edward Kennedy is largely known as JFK's brother. But he was also a power broker who mobilized Irish Americans and their political views on Northern Ireland - a kingmaker whose actions in the years before the Good Friday peace talks served to lay the groundwork for a lasting accord.

"He lived to see two great chasms bridged, between Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland and between black and white in his own United States," former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said. "These achievements, which were the dreams imagined by his brothers in his youth, were the legacy of a long life and of a good and great man."

Initially a strong supporter of the Irish nationalist cause, Kennedy was a key American promoter of the peace process, urging Britain to negotiate with the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party, and also reaching out to Protestant Unionists.

David Owen, who served as British foreign secretary in the 1970s, said Kennedy put his weight behind peace in Northern Ireland even at the risk of alienating powerful Irish-American allies whose sympathies lay with the province's Catholic Irish nationalists rather than the British Protestant majority.

"His influence on the peace process, and his influence on successive American presidents was I think absolutely crucial, and in particular of course on President (Bill) Clinton," Owen told the BBC.

Martin McGuinness, formerly an Irish Republican Army commander and now the senior Catholic in Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration, told the broadcaster that despite disagreements he had "always respected" the senator, saying that "he understood what was required for the conflict to be resolved."

At a Dublin pub, 69-year-old Gerry Keating said Kennedy's role in the peace process made him "a good man."

"He was a great friend of this country," Keating said.

The senator from Massachusetts inspired praise from leaders of nations and campaigners for human rights, and many expressed sadness at learning of his death Tuesday from a brain tumor.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Kennedy for "keeping and upholding the ideals and goals of the United Nations" and said his work "will be long remembered in the minds and in the hearts of many people, particularly vulnerable people, and those people whose human rights have been abused", Kazinform refers to China Daily.