Advisor: Regional conflicts can be settled

Martin Kuz

Thursday, May 20, 1999 | 12:22 p.m.

Never mind the centuries-long hostilities that have shredded Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, the Middle East and other regions of the world. No matter how long the war, no matter how deep the bitterness, peace remains only a handshake away.

So contends former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who last year helped broker an unlikely peace pact between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Subduing the tensions in the British-ruled province required nothing less than an "absolute conviction that a conflict can be ended," Mitchell said.

"Conflicts are not inevitable. They are created and sustained by human beings. They can be ended by human beings," he said.

Mitchell, 65, who has acted as a roving international diplomat since exiting the Senate in 1995, made his remarks Wednesday evening before the Anti-Defamation League. The organization gathered to honor Claudine Williams, chairwoman of Harrah's Las Vegas, with its distinguished community service award.

An international committee headed by Mitchell spent two years coaxing Northern Ireland's various political factions to set aside their animosity -- and their weapons -- in a quest for peace. The negotiations, despite occasional flare-ups of violence in the region during the process, led to creation of a 12-member Protestant-Catholic government that was to begin meeting last November.

A dispute over disarmament of the Irish Republican Army has stalled that effort, prompting British Prime Minister Tony Blair to set a deadline of June 30 for the government to convene. But Mitchell said the commitment shown by both Protestants and Catholics in trying to quell their mutual animosity suggests even sworn enemies can learn to forgive -- or at least not retaliate.

"I think it's important to understand that they were finally able to achieve the hope of peace because men and women of goodwill would not give up despite the many obstacles they faced," he said.

In a far-ranging interview following his address, the former Maine senator and lifelong Democrat elaborated on his view of the international scene and reflected on a variety of domestic issues that have dominated the news in the past year.

Mitchell dismisses the argument -- framed, at the moment, against the backdrop of U.S. involvement in the ongoing Balkan conflict -- that pursing peace where none has existed for centuries is an exercise in futility. He pointed to the bloodless breakup of the former Czechoslovakia as a portent that Catholics and Muslims in Yugoslavia or Palestinians and Jews in Israel may one day get along.

"I absolutely reject the notion -- and this is a personal conviction -- that (because) there's always been fighting, there's always going to be fighting. I don't believe that. ... The Czech Republic and Slovokia separated without anyone being killed. It's simply not true that it's inevitable that war must occur," he said.

In March Mitchell received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, for his work in Northern Ireland. Even so, he described the peace process as a discouraging, sometimes maddening trial of patience and diplomatic stamina that holds optimism hostage until the 11th hour.

Mitchell recalled that during talks in Northern Ireland, which he joined at President Clinton's request, negotiators were never able to persuade representatives of all 12 participating parties to gather in the same room. Fortunately, Mitchell joked, 15 years in the Senate steeled him for that sort of hardheadedness.

"I served as Senate majority leader for six years. Although I didn't realize it at the time, the Lord -- with the mysterious way that he works -- was preparing me for Northern Ireland," Mitchell quipped.

Despite his dovish presence on foreign soil in recent years, Mitchell supports the U.S.-led bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. He said the Clinton administration and NATO erred by withdrawing ground troops from the area at the outset of the conflict, but added that little public support exists at this point throughout the United States and Europe for deploying infantry.

Nonetheless, Mitchell predicted NATO's sustained airstrikes eventually will bring Yugolsav President Slobodan Milosevic to heel, and he sees U.S. intervention in the Balkans as part of a broader policy to "not hand over control of the (ideological) agenda to men of violence."

"I think one of the great and powerful lessons of the 20th century is the importance of wise and effective leadership in times of crisis, and how damaging the absence of such leadership can be to a country or the world," Mitchell said.

In that respect, the United States needs to keep an eye on its old adversary Russia, especially in light of recent parliamentary attempts by hard-line communists to oust an ailing Boris Yeltsin, Mitchell said.

"A couple months ago the Senate had a long debate on the threat of a nuclear attack by North Korea or Iraq. The Russians have 7,000 nuclear warheads capable of being targeted on the U.S. That should be a much more important focus for the U.S.," he said.

On matters closer to home, Mitchell and fellow former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole released a report earlier this week urging Congress to revamp, rather than abolish, the Independent Counsel Act.

Mitchell, a former U.S. attorney and U.S. District judge, voted to renew the act in 1994. But he asserted that independent counsel Kenneth Starr "abused" his prosecutorial authority in investigating Clinton.

In their proposal, Mitchell and Dole suggest that Congress narrow the scope of the special prosecutor's powers, as well as allow the Attorney General to decide at designated intervals whether an investigation should continue.

"I never dreamed that the act would be used in the way that it has been used during the Whitewater investigation," Mitchell said. "The power of prosecution is one of the greatest powers in a democratic society and the one, which is least accountable. There is a great need for restraint."

Yet while Mitchell, who serves as an adviser to Clinton, chastised Starr for his overzealousness and the House for its "abuse of the impeachment process," he also criticized the president.

"Any discussion of the subject (impeachment) must include the statement that the president's actions were reprehensible and indefensible and adversely affected the presidency," he said. The asterisk next to Clinton's name in history textbooks notwithstanding, Mitchell added that the impeachment "won't be all of his legacy. There will be a lot of good about his legacy."

In addition to his advisory and diplomatic duties, Mitchell headed the ethics panel that investigated the International Olympic Committee in Salt Lake City's tainted bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. The panel's report revealed that Salt Lake City's bidding committee offered cash, scholarships and other gifts to IOC members to woo them.

Egregious as the committee's actions were, Mitchell noted that Salt Lake City was far from the first city to tempt the IOC with illicit gifts.

"It was a very bad situation," Mitchell said. "But it was widespread -- it was not just Salt Lake City. What the people in Salt Lake City did was wrong, but they didn't invent the wrong."

As for the race to succeed Clinton, Mitchell said it's too early to handicap next year's presidential campaign. He cited his first bid for Senate in 1982 -- two years after he had been appointed to fill Edmund Muskie's seat -- in which he came back from 36 points down to win. But Mitchell hesitated only briefly before offering what he thinks should be the campaign's central issue: education.

"We spared no expense to produce the atomic bomb. We have massive and elaborate research facilities on how to improve weapons of destruction. We should use some of those techniques to figure out how to expand the definition of education," he said.