Special Envoy and Chairman of Multi-Party Talks George Mitchell Sample Clauses

Special Envoy and Chairman of Multi-Party Talks George Mitchell. A lawyer by profession, George Mitchell was elected as a Democratic Senator for the state of Maine in 1980 and between 1988-95 was the Senate majority leader. With the involvement of President Bill Clinton in the emerging peace process in Northern Ireland in the early 1990s, Mitchell was appointed by President Clinton as his Special Envoy in 1995, and later he became the Chair of multi-party talks and his role as a mediator was crucial in the success of the process which culminated with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. The British general election of May 1997 saw the return of a Labour government which then set a deadline of a year for the talks process to reach an agreement. Then the renewal of the IRA ceasefire in July 1997 allowed the entry of Sinn Féin (SF) into the negotiations in September 1997. Although this led to some of the unionist parties withdrawing from the talks, the presence of SF gave the process a sense of inclusiveness that had previously been lacking. The negotiations were taking place between the political parties in Northern Ireland and the British government with George Mitchell as the Chairman of the Plenary Sessions despite the objection of two unionist parties (Democratic Unionist Party-DUP and United Kingdom Unionist Party-UKUP). According to Mitchell, to gather all the conflicting sides around the same table was one of the most difficult things to achieve. (Mitchell, 1999, pp. 46- 75) Moreover, for the first four months, the parties could not agree even on a preliminary agenda (ibid, p. 76; 84-85). Mitchell‟s initiative to include SF in the talks without prior IRA decommissioning was a very important development. This also conforms with Zartman‟s premise that a strong mediator can overcome a very controversial issue to go ahead with the process. In fact, he was endowed with the authority of the President of the US, which was a significant source of influence. Even President Clinton himself, besides being in permanent contact with his Envoy Mitchell and the Prime Ministers of both countries, he also occasionally called the leaders of political parties in Northern Ireland (Leahy, 2017). The British government and other parties were asking for a peaceful environment and commitment not to use violence for the negotiations to continue, whereas the IRA was expecting some progress on the political side before being ready to lay down arms. The peace process picked up pace when these two conditions were somehow merged by the Mit...