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Bill Clinton has warned Northern Ireland will get “whacked” if voters back Brexit.

The former US president said June’s vote could impact on peace.

And he warned it was “too easy” to “hunker down” when dealing with the problems facing Europe.

Mr Clinton said: “It’s Northern Ireland that will really get whacked if Britain withdrew from the European Union.

“And I hope they don’t because it’s too easy to believe that the only solution to the problems in the world is to hunker down.”

Mr Clinton, was in the White House at the time the 1998 Good Friday Agreement was signed and was one of its main architects.

Speaking in New York, he said it was “too easy to turn away but it’s better to find a way to go forward”.

And he praised the objective of the 1916 Easter rebels. Mr Clinton added: “It’s a dangerous world out there.

“It’s easy to turn away, but it’s better to find a way to move forward because the enemies of freedom, the people who don’t believe in diversity, will always find a way to pierce the walls.

“We can never let our hearts to turn to stone, and we can never let things fall apart so much that we cannot build a centre where the future of our children counts more than the scars of our past.

“That is the ultimate lesson of every single thing that has happened from 100 years ago since that declaration was issued and all that has happened since 1995," the Telegraph reported.

Earlier this year, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that it would create “serious difficulties” for Northern Ireland if the UK was to leave the EU.

He said the European Union had been an “important, perhaps underestimated, enabler of peace in Northern Ireland”.

First Minister Arlene Foster responded: “It is for the people of the UK to decide what’s the best way forward and, as you know, we don’t take too kindly to people telling us what to do.

“I’m saying to Enda, if you have an opinion, that’s your right to have that opinion and if you want to express it, that’s your right as well, but we here in Northern Ireland will make our own determination in relation to Europe.”

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