U.S. Mediator Is ‘Bittersweet’ About Success

The quiet man from America crossed the Atlantic upward of 100 times--so often he’s lost count--and heard the same arguments and objections many more times than that. On occasion, he said as he suppressed a yawn early this morning, he thought his task could never be completed.

“There were many times I thought, ‘Gosh, am I wasting my time?’ ” George J. Mitchell remembered, speaking on the telephone from his hotel room. “And it’s funny--they themselves never thought they could do it.”

They--the participants in Northern Ireland peace talks--were wrong. On Friday afternoon, the former lawmaker from Maine and leader of Democrats in the U.S. Senate sat inside the complex of buildings that houses the provincial government and announced that the conference he has been chairing since June 1996 had managed to put together a formula that could bring lasting and unarmed peace between majority Protestants and minority Roman Catholics who have been fighting since the 17th century.

For the people of Northern Ireland, said Mitchell, now a Washington lawyer, the deal could be a fresh beginning. But for him, it was the end of a grueling, often frustrating but ultimately fruitful quest.

Mitchell, 64, had promised his wife, Heather MacLachlan, who is 26 years his junior, that he’d be home by Easter to be with her and their young son, Andrew, born Oct. 16--and he means to keep the commitment. He’ll be flying back today, he said.

“I have that bittersweet feeling that comes in life: I am dying to leave, but I hate to go,” Mitchell earlier told the assembled participants in the talks. “And I hope and pray that the action we have taken today gives everyone here, especially the children, the opportunity to enjoy the kind of life I want for my new young son.

“I have no future role in Northern Ireland. But I hope very much that in some small way I have and--if possible in the future--can contribute to peace, political stability and reconciliation here,” he said, his voice seeming to fill at times with emotion. “This is a wonderful place with wonderful people, and I’ve often thought: If only all of the effort, the planning, the energy, the resources that have gone to destructive purposes over the past 30 years could be put to constructive purposes of building a society, what a great place this would be.”

Protestant or Catholic, advocates of continued union with Britain or of absorption into the Irish Republic, participants in the talks praised Mitchell’s patience, unflappability and adroitness in teasing an accord from representatives of eight Northern Ireland political parties, some of whom won’t even shake the hands of others.

One said that in Mitchell’s place, he would have flown back to the U.S. already. How did the former senator manage to deal with a room full of stolid yet loquacious Irish politicians?

Mitchell’s laugh came clearly over the phone line as he reviewed the long search for a peace deal. He’d spent 14 years in the Senate, he pointed out--where there is no time limit on talking. He learned patience, and how to listen.

Originally appointed as President Clinton’s special advisor on U.S. economic initiatives to Ireland in February 1995, the year he retired from politics, Mitchell believed that the new--and unpaid--job of negotiations chairman that he took in June 1996 at the request of the British and Irish governments would last six months. He was way off, but that may have been crucial in his success.

“The length of time--in a curious way, looking back on it, I had that time to make decisions, to respond to people, and I could feel the confidence rising,” he said.

When he spoke by phone, Mitchell hadn’t been to sleep since negotiations went into make-or-break mode Thursday morning at his suggestion. Though it was British Prime Minister Tony Blair who set the deadline of May 1, 1998, for a deal, it was Mitchell who moved that up to Thursday. He wanted to turn up the pressure out of fears that there might soon be a new surge in sectarian violence and to get a package to voters before the summer “marching season” would risk envenoming Protestant-Catholic relations anew.

“People won’t make a decision if they don’t have to,” Mitchell said. “There had to be a deadline. . . . I could have been here in the next century.”

Clinton phoned Mitchell on Friday when it was 3 a.m. in Washington to get a briefing on progress in the peace talks, the former senator said, admiring the degree of Clinton’s interest and involvement. Mitchell said he will be visiting the White House on Easter Monday to give a fuller report.

As he bowed out of Northern Ireland’s politics, Mitchell thanked his two co-chairmen, retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain and former Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri.

He also reminded ordinary people here that the citizens of Northern Ireland “will make the difference.”

“If you support this agreement and if you also reject the merchants of death and the purveyors of hate, if you make it clear to your political leaders that you want them to make it work, then it will,” he said.

It has been three weeks since Mitchell has seen his Canadian-born wife, who lives in New York, and he was understandably impatient to get back. But on the phone, he suddenly remembered that he had a bit of unfinished business in Belfast before leaving.

“I don’t drink, but I promised some of these guys I’d get them a bottle of champagne if we had an agreement,” he said. “I’d better do that.”