THE visit to the U.S. of the Reverend Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland's first minister and deputy first minister, respectively, went better than anyone could have expected.

They spent over an hour with the president of the U.S., an astonishing amount of time if you consider the president's schedule and the competing concerns for his ear.

"He's obviously been taken with them," said a long-time member of the Washington media, quoted by the BBC, after it became public that President Bush had spent more than an hour with the Stormont ministers.

Paisley and McGuinness also met with key leaders of Congress, including Senators Edward Kennedy and Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as Irish American leaders in both houses.

They also met the editorial boards of The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, though the lack of coverage on the visit in those newspapers, as well as The New York Times, was certainly disappointing.

Here was a bona fide peace success story in a world that desperately needs encouragement for conflict resolution by peaceful means.

Yet the mainstream American media choose to ignore a story that was one of the most extraordinary in the modern era of how two former bitter enemies had come together to create peace.

Anyone who met Paisley and McGuinness certainly came away impressed. Both men have clearly put aside the slings and arrows of the past and have focused on creating a working relationship based on mutual dependency and trust.

The sincerity of their relationship has been questioned, but for those present at an American Ireland Fund reception last week where Paisley spoke most eloquently of his desire to be remembered as a man of peace and to do the best for his people, could not but have left impressed.

Shortly after McGuinness made his own impassioned plea for help and support for the new era. If the two ministers are faking it, then they deserve Oscar nominations.

The next step now is to build on what has been achieved with this visit by the time of the U.S. economic conference in Northern Ireland in May. Suffice to say a great start has been made.

A Missing Person

IT is the most awful of situations when a beloved family member goes missing.

Such is the dreadful position of the extended Devine family since Tony Devine, 29, seemingly vanished into thin air after leaving a Manhattan bar early on the morning of Friday, November 30.

Since then his frantic family, aided by scores of volunteers, have made every effort to try and locate the missing man, but with no success to date.

A reward has now been offered for information in this case, and a determined effort by friends and family has been undertaken to try and find him.

In all of these cases the breakthrough can often come about when someone remembers something, or has their memory jogged about a sighting they had previously overlooked.

No clue can be too small or too inconsequential to follow up, as the effort to find him has been joined by many professionals in this field.

Here's hoping that this mysterious disappearance can be solved sooner rather than later, and that a deeply traumatized family can find out where their loved one disappeared to on that fateful night. They deserve such an outcome.