Mitchell returning to hot seat re: Mideast/Northern Ireland (Boston Globe) -- Irish Media Watch Message Board

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Date Posted: 04:12:32 02/14/09 Sat GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Mitchell returning to hot seat re: Mideast/Northern Ireland (Boston Globe)

Mitchell returning to hot seat
Mideast poses new challenge
George Mitchell’s willingness to negotiate with militant groups involved in terrorism could create friction for the United States.
By Farah Stockman

Globe Staff / January 24, 2009

WASHINGTON - George Mitchell had had it. The time for talking was over.

George Mitchell's willingness to negotiate with groups involved in terrorism could create friction for the United States.

ANOTHER TOUGH ASSIGNMENT

After hundreds of days of intense peace negotiations in Northern Ireland over three years, and with the deadline he had set just hours away, the

parties were still arguing over details. So George Mitchell, the former senator from Maine who was leading the talks, declared that he was going home the next day, whether they reached agreement or not.

"He told them that he had a plane leaving Ireland, he intended to be on it, and if - at that critical moment - they didn't reach agreement, they would have to explain to the world why they didn't accept it," said Representative Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat who heard Mitchell recount the tale.

The Obama administration is hoping that Mitchell will bring the same mixture of toughness and subtlety, patience and impatience, to his new post as special envoy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The 75-year-old former Senate majority leader, who has been called on to address problems ranging from steroids in baseball to Olympic Games corruption, is now at the heart of the Obama administration's new effort to resolve the Mideast's toughest dispute.

"I think he approaches everything he does in the same way," said former senator Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican who was part of an international commission headed by Mitchell that reported on the prospects for Middle East peace in 2001. "He tries to learn the facts, tries to learn the positions, and tries to find areas of common ground."

But Mitchell's belief in dialogue - even when, as in Ireland, it involves militant groups that have committed terrorist acts - may create friction for the new administration. As recently as Thursday, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said they would not endorse direct talks with the militant group Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel's right to exist, and agrees to abide by past agreements, preconditions that Israel vehemently supports and Hamas has long rejected.

But friends and former colleagues say Mitchell's experience pushing the leadership of the militant Irish Republican Army to give up terrorist bombings and become peaceful politicians makes him more inclined to see Hamas as a crucial player that must be at the table for any peace agreement. Hamas won parliamentary elections and now controls Gaza, a significant part of any future Palestinian state.

"As George knows from his experience here - dialogue is key and this will mean direct dialogue with Hamas in the time ahead," Bairbre de Brún, a senior negotiator from Sinn Féin, the political party affiliated with the IRA, said in an e-mail yesterday.

Indeed, in a 2007 column titled 'Irish Lessons for Peace,' Mitchell wrote in favor of bringing militants into peace talks, although he did not mention Hamas by name.Continued...

"Sometimes it is hard to stop a war if you don't talk to those who are involved in it," he wrote. "Better they become participants than act as spoilers."

He also wrote that "preconditions ought to be kept to an absolute minimum." The one precondition that Mitchell did support was that the IRA had to be on cease-fire to have Sinn Féin at the negotiating table.

Those who are in favor of bringing Hamas to the table see Mitchell's appointment as a boon.

"What George Mitchell did in Northern Ireland was that he had the political wing of paramilitaries at the table," said Sieg Hart, chairman of Forward Thinking, a British conflict resolution group. "I hope he will rethink the architecture of the peace process and engage with the leadership of all the constituencies, including Hamas, because I don't think you can make any progress without that."

Mitchell's past gives him a unique vantage point. His mother was a textile worker from Lebanon who arrived in the United States at the age of 18. His father was the orphaned son of Irish immigrants who was adopted by a Lebanese family.

Mitchell grew up in relative poverty in Watertown, Maine, joined the Army, and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1954. In 1961, he earned a law degree from Georgetown University, and worked in a variety of legal jobs, including as an aide to Senator Edmund Muskie, before Mitchell was appointed US attorney and then a federal judge.

When Muskie became secretary of state in 1980, Mitchell was appointed to complete his Senate term. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming majority leader in just nine years, spurred by his ability to get his fellow senators "to do what they should be doing without having to be asked" - according to his own description of the job. His talent for finding common ground between warring factions helped pass the Clean Air Act of 1990.

He left the Senate in 1995 - choosing not to run again - but did not retire. He threw himself into a variety of efforts, including work for a well-connected law firm, and establishing The Mitchell Institute in Maine, which gives $5,000 to a graduating senior from each of Maine's 130 public high schools.

In 1996, he was asked to lead peace talks in Northern Ireland, a task that required him to make more than 100 trans-Atlantic trips over three years, coaxing the British and Irish governments and eight political parties toward peace.

The talks - pushed over the finish line by Mitchell's ultimatum - culminated in the Good Friday agreement on April 10, 1998, that ended hostilities between Britain and the IRA and set the North onto a path of reconciliation.

In 2000, Mitchell was asked to lead a commission to the Middle East to recommend how to stop the cycle of violence between Palestinians and Israelis and get the peace process back on track.

They met with the Israeli government and then traveled to Gaza to meet with about 35 Palestinian leaders assembled by Yasser Arafat, including members of Hamas, according to Rudman. The report they issued was seen as so evenhanded that it was accepted by both sides of the conflict, and became the foundation for President George Bush's so-called "road map" to peace, but the effort collapsed when neither side implemented its recommendations.

Since that time, Mitchell has juggled his service on corporate boards with philanthropic projects. He joined DLA Piper, a global law firm, and settled into a comfortable life in New York raising two children - ages 11 and 8 - with his wife, Heather.

"He's very happy in his life right now," said Rudman. "I don't think he wanted to get back [to the Middle East conflict] at all, but he's the quintessential public servant. It's a terrific sacrifice, but that's George."

Correction: Because of a reporting error, a Page One story Saturday misstated the hometown of Middle East envoy and former US senator George Mitchell. He is from Waterville, Maine.© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

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