On Tuesday, November 8, 2005, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP) will proudly present its prestigious William J. Flynn Initiative for Peace Award to Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin, and Hugh L. Carey, former governor of New York, at a dinner at the Waldorf=Astoria.

For more than a quarter of a century, Gerry Adams has been a pivotal figure in the quest to achieve an effective political settlement of the "Troubles." Largely as a result of his efforts, the Irish Republican Army formally ended its armed campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland and decommissioned its remaining weapons this year. That outcome would not have come about without the leadership and determination of Mr. Adams, who has transformed his party, Sinn Féin, into the leading nationalist party in Northern Ireland, as evidenced in the last election for the power-sharing Assembly in the North and reinforced by electoral victories in several parliamentary constituencies in Dublin and in successive elections to Parliament at Westminster.

Once banned from the airwaves in Ireland and Britain and barred from entering the United States, Mr. Adams was finally allowed to set foot on U.S. soil in 1994, when President Bill Clinton, in response to an appeal made by the NCAFP, ordered the State Department to issue a visa to him. That visa enabled Mr. Adams (as well as representatives from all sides of the divide in the North) to present his case in person to politicians, representatives of Irish America, scholars, and the media at a conference convened by the NCAFP. The trust placed in Mr. Adams by President Clinton, the NCAFP, and many others has borne fruit.

Governor Hugh L. Carey needs no introduction to New Yorkers who salute him for the leading role he played during the 1970s in rescuing New York City from bankruptcy. What is less widely known is the pioneering work that Governor Carey performed in the pursuit of peace in Northern Ireland. In the early 1980s, he denounced the use of violence as a means of bringing about necessary political change in that fractured land. Governor Carey and other Irish-American politicians such as Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and House Speaker Tip O'Neill became known as the Four Horsemen, although the end result of their work was hardly apocalyptic. Instead, it produced an environment that is conducive to the affirmation of life by encouraging investments in people, projects, and the peace process.

The William J. Flynn Initiative for Peace Award that Gerry Adams and Hugh Carey will receive on November 8 is aptly named. William J. Flynn, chairman of the NCAFP, is a peace pioneer who is known for his work throughout the island of Ireland. The countless risks he took for peace during almost two decades of involvement in the peace process have made him a legend in both the loyalist and republican communities in the land of his forebears. In his own homeland, Mr. Flynn was applauded by other advocates of peace such as Governor Hugh Carey for the direct approach he took to convince President Clinton to grant a visa to Gerry Adams. Mr. Adams's trip to the United States provided the impetus for the peace pioneers to come together in subsequent years and provide the kind of support that the leader of Sinn Féin would need to pursue the peace process, which culminated in the Belfast, or Good Friday, Agreement.

The National Committee on American Foreign Policy was founded in 1974 by Professor Hans J. Morgenthau and others. It is a nonprofit, activist organization dedicated to the resolution of conflicts that threaten U.S. interests. Toward that end, the NCAFP identifies, articulates, and helps advance American foreign policy interests from a nonpartisan perspective within the framework of political realism. Previous winners of the William J. Flynn Initiative for Peace Award are former United States Senator George J. Mitchell, the facilitator of the Good Friday Agreement, Dr. Marjorie J. Mowlam, who served as British secretary of state for Northern Ireland, and Viola Herms Drath, who laid the groundwork for the "2 + 4" process that led to the formal unification of Germany.