The Good Friday Agreement: 20 years on
The Good Friday Agreement marks its 20th year today and politicians involved in securing it have been reflecting on its significance.
For Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister, his 'hand of history' comment brings up mixed emotions.
Speaking at the time, he said: "A day like today is not a day for soundbites, we can leave those at home, but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder with respect to this, I really do.''
Looking at it now, he said he is able to appreciate the irony of that remark.
"I reflect on it with a mixture of pride because I think it's quite a good phrase and embarrassment, because, obviously, having just said 'Now is not the time for soundbites', I gave one,'' he said.
"I remember going back in after it, which literally came to me on the spur of the moment, this is what's so weird about it, and Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell saying to me 'You do realise what you've just said?'
"So that was one of the more amusing parts of it, but then Northern Ireland always did strange things to me."
For Lord David Trimble, his role in the process that led to the Agreement saw him jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with John Hume, but he said the credit belongs to the people of Northern Ireland.
"When we had the opportunity to put a good deal in front of people, that changed the context completely," he said.
"We saw that, subsequent to that, those dissident IRA people who did not want to see peace have failed in their campaign.
"Lives have been saved but lives have been saved primarily by the effectiveness of the security forces; that, I think, was a big part behind the republican decision to introduce, to go on to ceasefire and to then explore whether they could successfully take part in politics."
Mr Trimble went on to become first minister in the powersharing ministerial Executive at Stormont alongside Seamus Mallon.
Mr Mallon went to the houses of two life-long friends killed by loyalists and vowed to seal the Good Friday Agreement.
Philip Allen, a Protestant, and Damien Trainor, a Catholic, were shot dead in the Railway Bar in Poyntzpass in Co Armagh on March 3 1998, just weeks before the signing of the landmark peace deal.
Mr Mallon, a future deputy first minister at Stormont, joined the then Ulster Unionist leader in consoling grieving families who a judge later said suffered one of the most heinous events in the history of Northern Ireland.
The SDLP's former statesman, aged 81, said: "It certainly strengthened my resolve about getting an agreement.''
He added: "The symbolism of David Trimble and myself together was a stark reminder for ourselves and for everyone else that what we were involved in in the talks was essentially to prevent that ever happening again.
"It had an effect on the decision-making in that it provided a stark reminder of what we had to deal with and it brought a very, very potent urgency to what we were doing.''
Mr Mallon recalled: "In my dealings with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and particularly by David Trimble, there was no animosity, we respected each other's position.
"We knew where each of us was vulnerable and we respected that."
Former Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said he feared the reaction when he traveled to an Easter Rising commemoration in Carrickmore, Co Tyrone, two days after signing the accord.
"It was Good Friday, there was snow, there was a huge pile of media,'' the veteran politician said.
"And on Sunday I went to Carrickmore to speak. It was a big story of course, but you were always in a wee bit of trepidation about how would the republican base respond?
"And I was reconciled ... I was reassured by the fact that the mothers of two volunteers who had been killed immediately came up to me and embraced me and told me that we'd done a good job."
DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, then of the UUP, did not sign up to the Agreement, with one of the key sticking points for him the fact that some prisoners would walk free after committing crimes.
"Sean Kelly was to be released from prison having served less than one year for each life that he destroyed with that fatal bomb on the Shankill Road," he said.
"I find that morally difficult to accept.
"The failure to require the IRA to decommission their weapons before the prospect of Sinn Fein being in Government was also a very significant failure in the agreement.
"Those were going to result in serious problems with the implementation of the agreement.
"Reaching an agreement is only the end of the beginning; implementation of that agreement is often more challenging than the process of negotiating the agreement.
"Peace processes can unravel."
Several events have been planned to mark the 20th anniversary of the Agreement, but Stormont finds itself without an Assembly to reflect on the intervening years.