Former Sen. Mitchell Invited to Chair N. Ireland Talks

Britain and Ireland played an American card in their tortuous search for peace in Northern Ireland on Thursday, asking former Maine Sen. George Mitchell to chair longshot talks aimed at ending the sectarian strife.

The choice of Mitchell angered some in Britain and Ireland for whom the specter of a foreigner involved in delicate matters of state is demeaning.

Moreover, hard-line Protestants are leery of Mitchell. They want the province to remain part of Britain and say Mitchell is too close to Roman Catholic nationalists seeking closer links with Ireland.

And Mitchell’s task is daunting: Multi-party talks in Belfast will probably begin Monday without Sinn Fein, the political arm of the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

Analysts say the talks are dramatically weakened without Sinn Fein. And peace is not a possibility if the IRA does not accept a cease-fire and refuses to surrender its weapons.

Mitchell, who nudged baleful enemies toward the table in January with a compromise proposal on weapons surrender that led to the upcoming talks, will be overall chairman and preside at plenary sessions.

But he will simultaneously head a commission meeting parallel to the main sessions to negotiate the surrender of arsenals by Catholic and Protestant extremists, whose war of assassination and bombing has claimed 3,200 lives since 1969.

Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring and Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Patrick Mayhew, announced Mitchell’s appointment at a joint news conference in London.

“I believe this represents the best basis we can offer for meaningful, comprehensive and inclusive negotiations,” Spring said.

Mayhew called it a “historic turning point for the better” in Northern Ireland.

Mayhew said Mitchell “can clearly bring to bear a special insight and authority to take these issues forward.”

The White House weighed in supportively after President Clinton spoke by telephone with Irish Prime Minister John Bruton and Britain’s prime minister, John Major.

Clinton said the talks offer “a real chance to set aside the past and negotiate a future of hope and promise, justice and peace.”

In a statement, the president renewed American pressure on the IRA and Sinn Fein.

“I call once again for a restoration of the IRA cease-fire, which will enable the talks to be fully inclusive,” the statement said.

Ten political parties were elected to participate in the talks in May 30 voting in a province where Protestants are a 6-4 majority.

One of them was Sinn Fein, which ran fourth with 15.5% of the vote.

With American support, Britain and Ireland have ruled out Sinn Fein’s presence at the peace talks without prior restoration of the broken cease-fire by the IRA. Sinn Fein says it has the right to participate without conditions.

“We of Sinn Fein have a mandate to be there,” party leader Gerry Adams said Thursday. “I am absolutely convinced that we will arrive at real negotiations and conclusive dialogue, and Sinn Fein will be part of that. I don’t know whether this will happen by Monday.”

Adams says that Sinn Fein confers with the IRA but does not control it. Britain sees the two as virtually the same organization, referring to them as “Sinn Fein/IRA.”

In the intense maneuvering since the election, shadowy voices of senior IRA leaders have repeatedly told reporters in Belfast, the provincial capital, that a pre-talks cease-fire is extremely unlikely. “Out of the question,” was Thursday’s variation of the theme.

“It is manifest that Sinn Fein [members] have excluded themselves from these negotiations. We greatly regret that,” Mayhew said.

Said Spring: “It is up to them. Now is the moment of decision. There can be no reason to fudge a decision.”

Britain had initially insisted on at least a token weapons surrender before talks could begin. Together with moderates among the province’s unionists--those supporting ties with London--it then grudgingly accepted Mitchell’s proposal that arms be surrendered during ongoing talks.

The IRA, which has a large and well-equipped armory, adamantly insists that it will not surrender any weapons before a final settlement.

“We cannot leave nationalist areas undefended,” one IRA leader said this week.

Such nationalist intransigence has hardened loyalist distrust of the peace process. How can there be meaningful peace talks if one party reserves violence as a wild card, Protestant leaders ask.

As part of the agreement thrashed out in repeated Spring-Mayhew meetings this week, participants will take stock at the end of September of the progress of the negotiations as a whole, with particular reference to arms surrender, referred to as “decommissioning.”

Protestant paramilitary groups that sprang up in response to IRA violence are maintaining their own cease-fire and seem willing to consider decommissioning of their small arsenals.

Mitchell’s role in the talks emerged as a compromise Thursday after prolonged Anglo-Irish wrangling.

Irish officials argued that a key role for Mitchell, the former Democratic Senate majority leader, could encourage renewal of a 17-month cease-fire that was broken by the IRA with a series of London bombings in February. Britain preferred that Mitchell’s role be limited to the arms-surrender question.

Under Thursday’s agreement, Gen. John de Chastelain, retired head of the Canadian military and Ottawa’s former ambassador to Washington, will chair separate talks dealing with future relations between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.