Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will visit Northern Ireland next week, as exclusively reported on IrishCentral.comsome months back.

Clinton will meet with political leaders for talks about the North's future in Northern Ireland on October 12 and will also visit Dublin.

She will spend half a day in each city and the priority in Ireland will be the troubled state of the peace process as threats from dissident IRA groups escalate and political infighting continues.

It will be the first visit by a Secretary of State to Dublin and Belfast on the same trip since the Clinton presidency, and highlights the commitment that the Obama White House is giving to the continuation of the successful peace process there.

Clinton is expected to be accompanied by Declan Kelly, recently named U.S. Special Envoy to Northern Ireland and by the U.S. ambassadors to both Ireland and Britain.

The Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward said  Mrs Clinton and her husband former president Bill Clinton had been “unstinting” in their support for Northern Ireland.

He said that Clinton "specifically wants to come to Northern Ireland to help look at the jobs and opportunities and investment that America can bring to Northern Ireland.

He said there were 42 million Irish-Americans who want to invest in Ireland and that America “wants to put its money where their hearts truly rest."