Clinton Offers Support to Ireland : Europe: But no new funds are promised. President interrupts vacation to meet with nation’s foreign minister.

EDGARTOWN, Mass. — President Clinton met briefly Friday with Irish Foreign Minister Richard Spring and offered support, but no new money, to help Ireland’s peace effort.

“The United States is strongly supportive of this peace process,” Clinton said in a statement to Irish television after the meeting at his vacation residence near here. “We want all the communities to feel a part of the peace process and to feel that there is a peace dividend.”

For his part, Spring told reporters afterward that Clinton had made a “genuine and serious commitment to assisting,” adding that he “would be hopeful that substantial sums would be forthcoming.”

As a way of easing tensions, British and Irish officials hope to begin economic development projects in Northern Ireland--the area that remains part of Britain.

But White House officials made it clear that Spring’s hope is unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon. Clinton and Spring “didn’t even talk about dollar figures,” White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers told reporters after the meeting.

Clinton said he wants to “look for ways to help” the peace process by aiding economic development in Northern Ireland, Myers said, but his Administration faces “severe budgetary constraints” on any foreign aid package.

Indeed, the foreign aid budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 has been approved by Congress, so any funds for Northern Ireland beyond the $20 million that the United States already provides would have to wait more than a year.

Even then, given the tight nature of the U.S. foreign aid budget, financial assistance for economic development in Northern Ireland probably would be a tough sell.

Administration officials hope the United States can help but have suggested the main source of aid is likely to be private investment. They expect such assistance to increase if the cease-fire declared earlier this week by the Irish Republican Army holds.

One possibility would be for the U.S. government to provide insurance to American investors who want to join in Irish development projects but worry about the risks posed by the region’s 25 years of guerrilla warfare that has claimed more than 3,000 lives.

In Northern Ireland on Friday, the IRA apparently was holding its fire, refusing to break its cease-fire as a carpenter killed by Protestant gunmen was buried and the Protestants claimed responsibility for another slaying, the Associated Press reported.

The Protestant killings were the first test of the IRA’s resolve to make peace. Skeptics have said the cease-fire would only last until the first Catholic was killed.

Gerry Adams, head of the Sinn Fein party allied with the IRA, appealed to his supporters to remain calm in the face of Protestant provocation.

“The IRA is a disciplined force and will not be provoked by anyone who is trying to wreck the peace process,” Adams said in Dublin.

Moderate Protestants urged the gunmen to stop the killings that they said would only help the IRA, the AP said. Adams called on the British government to begin discussing withdrawing its troops from Northern Ireland in response to the cease-fire, which began Thursday.

At the funeral for Sean MacDermott, a 37-year-old Catholic carpenter slain early Wednesday, Monsignor Michael Dallat led more than 1,000 mourners in prayers for peace.

MacDermott was dragged from his home and shot by masked Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen before the IRA offered a cease-fire as a gesture toward ending its campaign of shootings and bombings.

Meantime, the hard-line Protestant Ulster Defense Assn. acknowledged killing John O’Hanlon, 32, on Thursday, the first day of the cease-fire. It also admitted shooting at a taxicab, but the Catholic driver was not hit.

As for Clinton, his meeting with Spring was the only major break so far in his vacation regimen of golf, boating and reading, and he did not allow the interruption to linger.

Within moments of the Irish visitor’s departure, Clinton’s motorcade was headed up the dirt road from his house on Martha’s Vineyard to a nearby state forest, where he went on a 25-minute jog.

Clinton later headed off for a sailing excursion to a small island in Vineyard Sound with his vacation companion, Washington lawyer and lobbyist Vernon Jordan.

Unlike last summer, when Clinton and his wife, Hillary, maintained a hectic schedule of dinners with the island’s rich and famous, the President and First Lady have kept a relatively low profile.

The Clintons dined one night at the home of Katharine Graham, the retired publisher of the Washington Post, and another night with authors William Styron and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Other than that, the President has ventured forth mostly to play golf, while the First Lady and daughter Chelsea have spent much of their time relaxing at their vacation home, a secluded house near the beach.

Thursday night, the Clintons attended a party for reporters, where the President played saxophone with a local band and sang with Carly Simon as the sun set.