Mitchell Built Foundation of Trust for N. Ireland Peace Breakthrough

When U.S. negotiator George J. Mitchell summoned Protestant and Roman Catholic leaders to his borrowed office almost 11 weeks ago to try to salvage the Good Friday peace agreement, he found their dialogue--if you could call it that-- to be “harsh and filled with recrimination.”

Nearly a year and a half after signing the accord, Ulster Unionist Party chief David Trimble and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams still were uncomfortable in the same room together. Mitchell sat them around a small conference table with their aides for two hours at a time and listened to them blame each other for the failure of the peace process.

But in those hostile exchanges, Mitchell also heard one positive element: Both sides wanted the agreement to work. The problem was how.

The fact that Trimble and Adams now are not only speaking civilly to each other, but speaking the same language of peace and reconciliation, is a tribute to Mitchell’s insight. And to his skills in patient diplomacy.

“He would not contemplate failure,” said Monica McWilliams, a leader of the Women’s Coalition, an independent political party that took part in some of the talks.

In an interview Thursday, Mitchell, who brokered the April 1998 Good Friday agreement and was called back to rescue it, was circumspect about his achievements and the outlook for peace.

“When we signed the Good Friday accord, I said it didn’t provide a guarantee of peace, but made it possible. The same is true today,” Mitchell said before leaving Belfast, the provincial capital, and what he hoped would be his last peacemaking job in Northern Ireland.

“It would be a huge mistake to regard this as a happy ending because there is a long way to go,” he said.

But while serious difficulties lie ahead, it would also be a mistake not to recognize the tremendous hurdles the parties have overcome under the guidance of Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader.

Trimble has dropped his long-standing demand that the outlawed Irish Republican Army turn in some of its guns before its political ally Sinn Fein is allowed into a new power-sharing government. Trimble, who as head of the largest party is to lead the new government, now says that Sinn Fein can take its two seats in a 12-member executive body.

Furthermore, Trimble’s pro-British party stated that it “recognizes and accepts that it is legitimate” for Catholic nationalists to pursue their goal of a united Ireland through peaceful and democratic means.

Sinn Fein responded that the disarmament of paramilitary groups such as the IRA is “an essential part of the peace process,” and acknowledged that it has a responsibility to help bring that about.

The IRA followed with an unprecedented statement of support for Sinn Fein’s leadership and peace strategy, and it promised to name a representative to an independent disarmament commission.

In the past week, both Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists have quit making demands of each other. Instead, the establishment of a government and disarmament--known in local jargon as devolution and decommissioning--have become the two essential pillars. Neither side mentions one without the other.

Mitchell said several steps must be taken almost simultaneously.

“Devolution should take effect, then the executives should meet, and then the paramilitary groups should appoint their representatives, all in the same day in that order,” he said.

Mitchell was brought back into the peace process in September when it was on the brink of collapse. After listening to the parties vent their anger, he decided that what was needed was to build the confidence necessary for them to take difficult steps.

Mitchell ordered a media blackout to keep the two sides from negotiating in public and to keep discussions focused on issues.

He then moved the talks out of Belfast to the relative isolation and security of the U.S. ambassador’s residence in London. For much of two weeks, the parties sat in comfortable chairs and overstuffed sofas, walked in the garden and ate together. All the while, they talked.

“I insisted there was no assigned seating at dinner, no nationalists on one side, unionists on the other. It was mixed up, random, and there were no negotiations. We talked about sports, family, fishing, things like that. And gradually, the proper atmosphere was created,” Mitchell said.

McWilliams of the Women’s Coalition added that it was vital that the two sides did not have to worry about eavesdropping and leaks, as they would have in Belfast.

For the first time, she said, they talked and negotiated face to face and got to know each other before committing their ideas to paper, where positions become more difficult to change.

When the two sides failed to understand each other, Mitchell sent them back again and again, sometimes asking questions he thought needed to be asked, participants said.

“And then they helped each other to draft the documents they each wanted to see from the other side,” McWilliams said. “Whoever would have imagined that?”

Trimble now must sell the deal to his own party, which could split over it. At least half of the Ulster Unionist Party members of the British Parliament are opposed to it, as are a quarter of the party’s bloc in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Trimble is expected to take the deal to the more than 850 members of the party’s council Nov. 27.

Sinn Fein also has some selling to do. Many of its followers are skeptical about the peace process. And many do not want to see the IRA disarmed. There are many questions, too, about whether the IRA really is willing to give up weapons for good.

In his farewell statement, Mitchell reminded both sides that these negotiations, like the Good Friday agreement, had produced a fair, if difficult, blueprint.

“As a result of these efforts, neither side will get all it wanted and both will endure severe pain,” Mitchell said. “But there is no other way forward.”