George Mitchell

This Christmas, the people of Northern Ireland have received the gift of peace after 30 years of bitter war. Former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell is one of the bearers of that gift. Mitchell, chairman of the Northern Ireland peace negotiations, has stated that he imagines a future for Northern Ireland where there will be “no talk of war, for war will have long been over” and “no talk of peace,” for peace will be taken for granted.

Mitchell’s ideal came closer to realization earlier this month, when Northern Ireland established a devolved government in Belfast made up of the major nationalist and unionist parties. For the first time in Northern Ireland’s history, Sinn Fein, the political representative of the Irish Republican Army, will be part of the Northern Ireland Assembly and executive committee of the new political institutions. On the streets of Belfast and Dublin, it is Mitchell who people frequently mention as the person most responsible for keeping the fragile peace talks from unraveling.

When President Bill Clinton asked Mitchell, who retired from the U.S. Senate in 1995, to head up an initiative on trade and investment in Northern Ireland, he didn’t realize that four years later he would still be embedded in the political and emotional thicket of Northern Irish life. After completing Clinton’s initial economic initiative, Mitchell was appointed by the British and Irish governments to chair an international commission on decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, a precursor to full-scale political negotiations that began in June 1996 and culminated in the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998.

Mitchell was initially vilified by extreme elements in the unionist community as a tool of American “Catholic” interests. He diplomatically but forcefully opposed then-British Prime Minister John Major on the timing of weapons decommissioning and had to temporarily remove both Sinn Fein and a loyalist party from negotiations for violation of what became know as the “Mitchell principles.” The core of those principles was a commitment to democracy and nonviolence by each political party as a precondition to entering negotiations.

It’s not surprising that Clinton looked to Mitchell to help mediate one of the most intractable conflicts in the world. During his six years as majority leader of the Senate, Mitchell, now 66, earned a reputation as a genial but tough political leader.

During the negotiations, Mitchell’s second wife, Heather MacLachlan, gave birth to a baby boy, Andrew MacLachlan Mitchell, who they want to bring to a peaceful Northern Ireland. The interview was conducted from Mitchell’s law office in Washington.

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Question: There is an inclusive government in Northern Ireland for the first time in its history. But there is increasing concern that the February review--or deadline--put forward by the Ulster Unionist Party for the beginning of arms decommissioning could bring the government down. What’s your assessment?

Answer: I think there is any one of a number of events or actions that could cause this process to be terminated. There’s no assurance of a final success at any point along the way. The reality is that there remain, in both communities, small but potentially potent numbers of people who are opposed to the process and will resist it not just through democratic politics but through the use of violence. They are people who want a settlement that is 100% their way and who regard any compromise as a sellout--that’s on both sides. Part of the public understanding and support must be that it’s a long-term process, not a single event.

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Q: Why did the issue of decommissioning of weapons become so central to the process, and how will this be resolved?

A: It’s an important issue and has been from the very beginning. But it is a mistake to view it in isolation and outside the context of the Good Friday Agreement. The agreement involves several key provisions, and they are all interdependent. No one or two important provisions are going to be achieved unless they all are achieved. That is the case whether it be devolution of authority from the British Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly or the creation of a North-South Ministerial Council. There are also a series of other measures in the agreement dealing with policing, criminal justice, prisoner release and other controversial issues. So they’re all an integrated whole, and they all have to move forward.

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Q: Is it your belief the IRA should begin some decommissioning before February, or is this another “precondition” that is not part of the agreement, which calls for full decommissioning by May 2000?

A: I have been for decommissioning since I first became involved there. I said, in my statement in November, that the parties had agreed that decommissioning should begin as quickly as possible. The so-called Mitchell principles, which are identified with my name, specifically require the parties to commit to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organizations and 1/8make it 3/8 independently verifiable. This is not just about the IRA. What is being said applies to all the paramilitaries on both sides.

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Q: How did you approach the process analytically, being thrown into a situation that was so delicate and bound up with a long and bitter history?

A: During the year and a half between my first visit there, in early 1995, and my assuming chairmanship of the negotiations, in June of 1996, I had read about two dozen books on the history of the conflict and politics of the region. In fact, it was quite an interesting personal experience to meet and work with people whom I had read a lot about before I actually got to meet them. It wasn’t so much a difficulty of getting the leaders facing in the right direction, but rather trying to figure out a way to enable them to go to where I felt they already wanted to go.

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Q: Once underway, the negotiations proceeded from crisis to crisis. Each of these moments of potential breakdown was overcome. Was it individual leadership, persistence and luck that got you through, or were there broader historical, political and economic dynamics that laid the groundwork for a successful outcome?

A: Both are true to some extent. But I think back to a statement Harry Truman once made when asked about the communist ideology of large impersonal forces at work which determined history, notwithstanding the actions of individuals. Truman, in his usual pungent style, said, “Men make history, not the other way around.” I think he was basically right. Clearly, those broader forces do exist in Northern Ireland, but it still takes strong, effective and courageous political leadership to make things happen.

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Q: What was the most difficult issue to overcome in the negotiations?

A: The biggest problem was the absence of trust, the mistrust and even the hatred that has developed over many years of conflict and disagreement. Now, it’s realistic to say that there is a greater willingness to listen and to try to accommodate each others concerns. You can rebuild quickly a building that’s been destroyed by a bomb and replace a motor vehicle that has been burned out. But to change what is in people’s hearts and minds takes a long time. This usually requires years and, in this case, perhaps generations.

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Q: You mentioned in your book “Making Peace” that the “intra-Unionist conflict” and fight for leadership of the unionist political community was a principal subplot in the negotiations. It seems this dynamic made the negotiations unstable at several points in the process.

A: It is a political fact of life in Northern Ireland that the unionist community is divided over the whole process, including the Good Friday Agreement. There are now represented in the Assembly four political parties which are opposed to the Good Friday Agreement and its implementation, and they are all unionists. Three of them are relatively small parties, and the one large one is the Democratic Unionist Party headed by Dr. Ian Paisley. In addition, in the largest unionist party, the Ulster Unionist Party, there is disagreement on some of the specifics of moving forward. The community is divided, and it repeatedly manifested itself in the course of negotiations. The anti-agreement parties were quite open in saying they were in the process to try to make sure that no agreement was reached. Dr. Paisley repeatedly used the phrase that he wanted to “wreck the process.”

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Q: What kind of dynamic evolved over time between David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, and Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Fein?

A: By the time we reached the Good Friday Agreement, the Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein had not spoken directly. They used to communicate through me. In the early stages of the review of the Good Friday Agreement, this year, the meetings were quite hostile and antagonistic, with more accusations than negotiations. I tried hard to encourage them to engage in a serious discussion and to accept the good faith of the other in terms of their desire to implement the Good Friday Agreement. I met with them separately and together. I said I personally believe that both of you want to implement this agreement, and neither of you believes it about the other. A process began under which they did engage in serious discussions, which led to the current situation.

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Q: You held negotiations outside of Northern Ireland for a time.

A: The early meetings in Belfast were not productive. These guys are politicians, and they would get phone calls from constituents and so on. A lot of time was wasted in the negotiations leading up to the Good Friday Agreement, and in the early stages of this review, on recrimination about what was in the papers that day. After meetings at Stormont 1/8Parliament building 3/8 in Belfast, the parties would go outside to speak to the press. It makes it very hard to negotiate in this circumstance when you are conducting it through the media.

I decided that we ought to move, and they were willing. We decided on the residence of the U.S. ambassador in London, and we also agreed to a news blackout, with no comments to the media.

So the first meeting in London lasted two days, not two hours. I arranged for them to eat their meals together. I asked them not to talk about the negotiations, but just to talk about families and friends and hobbies and sports--the kinds of normal conversation that people have. I wanted them to see each other not as adversaries but as human beings, living in the same place and having the same aspirations.

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Q: The deal sets up a unique form of government that attempts to include both traditions and political aspirations in Northern Ireland. Could you describe that structure and some of its potential pitfalls?

A: I call it a “power-sharing” form of government, in which a very large minority is assured that it will share in the power of governance. Basically, the new Assembly adopts power sharing that we used during the negotiations, which is to say that you need a majority overall and a majority within each community on major issues. It will make it difficult to achieve consensus, but it’s important to achieve consensus at least for the early years of operation of the government. There are going to be controversies and setbacks, but it’s a solution tailored to the problem.

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Q: Northern Ireland is a place that previous U.S. presidents primarily ignored. President Clinton is the first sitting president to visit Northern Ireland, and he became directly involved during his first term--over the objection of then British Prime Minister John Major. Why did Clinton become engaged in the way that he did?

A: Previous presidents shied away from getting involved for two reasons. First, there didn’t seem to be any possible solution. And second, it involved two very close friends and allies of the United States, Britain and Ireland. No president wanted to get involved between two allies where it seemed hopeless. But it’s a place of President Clinton’s heritage. Since I’ve known him he’s always had a keen interest in Ireland. And, to his great credit, he’s the first president to make it a high priority and the first to pursue a solution there with a great deal of determination and effort. The people of Ireland, north and south, recognize that and hold the president in the very highest esteem.

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Q: How did you approach this process psychologically where you were dealing with two communities that saw themselves as a victimized group?

A: The first thing is you must be able to listen. I felt I had to get inside their heads and inside their histories and fully understand why they were taking the positions and acting as they did. The second thing was that I understood that they were politicians, and I’m a politician, so there was a reason I got along with them and was sympathetic to their situation.

It’s very fashionable here in the United States and in Northern Ireland to ridicule and demean politicians. But, at least in the case of Northern Ireland, they were trying hard in very difficult circumstances. For two years, I basically listened to the same things over and over again. I was ultimately able to detect things that I felt represented a common ground, that I could build on to get an agreement among them. I had to convey a sense of optimism and not become so despairing at the many setbacks that might make you give up.

Finally, you have to have the judgment to try to bring it to a conclusion at the right time.