By Brian Williams
LONDON (Reuters) - President Clinton ended a visit to Britain and Ireland on Thursday with a speech that singled out globalization as the key foreign policy issue that could be faced by his successor George W. Bush.
In a valedictory speech at the end of a visit that was possibly the last foreign tour of his presidency, Clinton said there was no stopping globalization now that it was underway.
"So the great question before us is not whether globalization will proceed, but how? And what is our responsibility in the developed world to try to shape this process so that it lifts people in all nations," he told an audience at Warwick University in the heart of Shakespeare country in central England.
In the past three days Clinton has been on a roller-coaster of emotions in two countries he admits he holds in special regard.
There was a hero-like reception when he arrived in Dublin on Tuesday. On Wednesday he ran into the squabbling of Northern Ireland politicians in Belfast and also learned there that his vice-president Al Gore would not replace him.
On Thursday, Clinton, his wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea had morning tea at Buckingham Palace with Queen Elizabeth before going on to their final stop in Warwick, just 20 miles (30 km) from William Shakespeare's birthplace.
After the audience with the queen, Clinton washed down the tea with a glass of beer at a pub in the famed Portobello Road market in London's Notting Hill district.
When the lights went out in the pub Clinton joked about what life had been like for him since he became president in 1992.
"Feel free to blame me," Clinton told those in the pub. "Back home people try sometimes to blame the weather on me."
Fears For Post-Clinton Era
White House officials have called Clinton's visit to Ireland a success, saying the parties were committed to settling their differences and implementing the 1998 Good Friday accord.
"The challenge now is to find the way to do that," National Security Adviser Sandy Berger told reporters in Belfast after Clinton held talks with leaders at Stormont, the building where North Ireland's once-warring groups now openly debate their differences in a power-sharing government.
U.S. officials made little progress on the thorniest issues -- disarmament and policing reforms -- which have put the Good Friday agreement in peril.
The visit was also marred by doubts over the future of the peace process once Clinton leaves office on January 20.
Clinton sought to reassure leaders that Washington would continue to play a leadership role in the push for peace. But Berger conceded that the parties felt a "sense of urgency."
Some diplomats doubt that a Republican administration led by President-elect George W. Bush would play as active a role in the process as that of Democratic Clinton, whose intervention was critical to Northern Ireland's difficult journey away from communal violence and toward an uneasy peace.
CUTTING EDGE OR RAZOR'S EDGE?
In his speech at Warwick, Clinton said the world could only gain from globalization although there would be dangers.
"Whilst some of us walk on the cutting edge of the new global economy, still amazing numbers of people live on the bare razor's edge of survival. These trends are likely to be exacerbated by a rapidly growing population, expected to increase by 50 percent by the middle of this century," Clinton said.
"Parenthetically, I believe there are national security and common security aspects of this whole globalization challenge," he added.
"As we open borders and we increase the freedom of movement of people, information and ideas, this open society becomes more vulnerable to multinational organized forces of destruction."
Clinton left Britain with the ringing endorsement of his presidency from the Warwick audience.
"Now that we know that Bush will take over, I think I'm going to really miss him (Clinton)," said one student.
Others said Clinton's words were targeted both toward the world, and toward his successor.
"It was a message to the next President that he should take on the responsibilities that Clinton is passing on," said Harun Masiku, a 28-year-old politics student.:
