This week marks the anniversary
of an event that brought New
Hope to a deeply troubled land.
25 years ago this week,
the Good Friday Peace Accords
were signed in Northern Ireland.
Those agreements might never
have happened without the
involvement of former US Senator
George Mitchell of Maine. He
was appointed U.S.
special Envoy to Northern Ireland
by then President Bill Clinton.
2O Sevens Don Kerrigan talked
with Senator Mitchell a few days
ago about that achievement,
which he says almost didn't happen
in 1997. Parts of Northern Ireland
still look like a battlefield,
with British soldiers and heavily
armed police guarding the streets.
And after trying for close to two
years to find a peace agreement,
Senator George Mitchell
remembers being worried. A
lot of insults, a lot of back and forth.
And then it kind of hit rock bottom.
Around Christmas of 1997,
that meant we'd been in talks for more
than a year and a half and there was
a violent episode and there was an
escalating series of retaliatory killings.
So the killings and bombings,
which had been largely reduced under
the ceasefires during the negotiations,
flared up. And it looked like.
The whole process was coming to an end.
Senator Mitchell was ultimately able to
save those talks, but it wasn't easy.
And earlier that same year he had
given new center mains, Pat Callahan,
a street tour of Belfast and
the complex obstacles to peace.
60% of the people consider
themselves British and 40% of the
people consider themselves Irish.
And that's the nub of the
problem you have here, a.
Clash of Nationalities,
a clash of religion,
a clash of cultures,
and unfortunately all of that combined
has produced a clash of violence,
he recalled those days when
we talked 25 years after the
historic Good Friday Agreement.
At that time, all sides hoped it
would end decades of violence,
killings and bombings.
It was a very difficult
and dangerous place in the
25 years or so before the peace agreement.
In political violence in Northern Ireland,
3500 people were killed and 50,000
were seriously injured, many of them
brutally and totally impaired for life.
Ending that violence,
he says, meant understanding,
anger and resentment that dated back
hundreds of years as well as the
modern parts of the conflict. This
is both a religious a political.
And to some extent, a geographic and
economic conflict that's extended
over a very long period of time,
and it required working with
and listening to more than half
a dozen different factions to
hunt for common ground. For most
of the two years,
there was very little progress.
These political leaders had lived
their entire lives in conflict.
They didn't listen to one another,
Mitchell says, when the talks
appeared to be headed nowhere.
He decided to call for a final deadline,
reach agreement or go home.
And when they all agreed to the deadline,
I knew that they were serious.
That despite their many difficulties,
despite the hostility, the violence,
the intensity, they didn't want
to go back to the violence.
And during that time, Senator
Mitchell faced his own hard decision.
His son was born in the US.
The senator went home to be there.
And called his office in Northern Ireland.
When I asked my assistant there
to find out how many children were
born in Northern Ireland that day,
and they came back very quickly
with the figure 61 children were
born in Northern Ireland on the same
day that my son Andrew was born.
And so I when I told my wife that
I was thinking about going leaving
because as every parent knows,
when you have a child your
responsibilities change irreversibly.
She said no, you go back,
she said I'll take good care of Andrew.
You worry about those 61 kids.
So I went back and a few months later
we were able to get an agreement.
It was April 10th, 1998 that the Good
Friday Peace Accords were signed,
an agreement that Mitchell says changed
the lives of people in Northern Ireland.
In the 25 years since the agreement,
there have been a total of 155. Yes,
still too many, of course,
but a far cry from the 3500
dead and 50,000 wounded of the
25 years before the agreement.
So it's a long, hard
struggle. And differences remain.
There's still segregation,
there's still hostility,
there's still many,
many differences and disagreements.
But they made it fundamental decision
to resolve the differences through
democratic and peaceful means,
not through political violence.
And that's the central result and
the central issue of the agreements,
which I helped negotiate
and a quarter century after Pat
Callahan walked those same streets.
He says George Mitchell
was key to bringing peace.
Personally, I think it's probably
the most important thing he did on a
worldwide scale because it changed
a country and changed the lives of
thousands and thousands of people.
And in that, Mitchell told
me, it's a lesson for
the world. The people of
Northern Ireland were able
to reach an agreement to decide
their disagreements through
democratic and peaceful means,
and if they could do it there.
Anybody can do it in their own country
and it should also judge the peace
negotiator, the senator, just as well.
Senator Mitchell told us he is hoping
to be in Northern Ireland next Monday
to give the opening speech at the
ceremony marking the 25th anniversary.
And Bill Clinton is traveling to Ireland,
President Biden is traveling to Ireland.
So this is. A milestone.
A true milestone, because this piece has,
for the most part,
endured and changed life in
Northern Ireland and Ireland.
And George Mitchell will be marking
a personal milestone too.
Later this year he'll turn 90.