Former US president Bill Clinton has said granting a visa to Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams in 1994 "made all the sense in the world".
He said he agreed to the then Sinn Fein leader's request so that the United States would "look like an impartial body" during the Northern Ireland peace process.
Mr Clinton discussed his decision during a conference at Queen's University Belfast to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
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Mr Adams was granted a 48-hour visa to travel to the US in January 1994, in spite of sustained pressure from British government officials to prevent it happening.
He made a number of speeches and public appearances during his visit, but was not allowed to fundraise.
IRA violence continued until August when a ceasefire was called.
Speaking at the Agreement 25 conference, Mr Clinton said: "He asked for a visa and we agreed so I could make the United States look like an impartial body, that I would grant a visa for two days but there would be no fundraising.
"Everybody knew that a lot of money was going into Ireland from the north-east United States, but not on this trip.
"We wanted to send a signal that we wanted to be involved but we wanted to be fair to everybody."
He added: "At the time it was crazy they thought, but I thought it made all the sense in the world because what we were doing was not working and it seemed to me just from the talk that the public was maybe way ahead of the politicians in their desire to have some sort of resolution to this.
"So I gave Gerry the visa and he kept his word as he always did in dealing with me and the rest is history."
During the conference, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair also recalled the reaction to his first meeting with Mr Adams and Martin McGuinness, who was Sinn Fein's chief negotiator.
He said that "at the time this was very shocking to people, and you had to be prepared to do it.
"And I remember after I did it, after I met them for the first time I then went to a shopping centre for a visit, when I got to the shopping centre I was saying hello to people and so on, and suddenly this huge wave of people, including people who were wearing washing up gloves – those plastic washing up gloves.
"The last time I had ever seen anyone wear these was my mum, and I thought, ‘What’s going on here, what sort of protest is this?'
"It was all to do with the fact I shouldn’t have been shaking hands with Gerry Adams because this was a big thing, there was a huge debate – yes you can meet him but you can’t shake hands with him.
"I said, ‘We’re going to meet him and we’re going to shake hands, let’s just do what you would do, one human being to another … we know we disagree about the past but let's see if we can agree about the future.'
Mr Blair said the late Mo Mowlam, who was Northern Ireland secretary at the time, then visited loyalist prisoners in the Maze prison.
He added: "All of these things were difficult, I don't think anything could have happened unless we were prepared to sit down and to talk to people, and to understand these conflicts come about because there are two distinct narratives in opposition to each other."
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