FORMER US senator George Mitchell, who played a critical role in the Irish peace process, was last night honoured at Queen’s University, Belfast, where he formally bowed out after 10 years as chancellor of the college.
Mr Mitchell, who was special guest at the college’s honorary graduates’ dinner, said he was sad at standing down but accepted that when taking on the post of president Barack Obama’s new special envoy to the Middle East he must do the job full-time.
He said his time in the North since 1995 and his involvement in chairing the peace talks was “a very important part” of his life.
He recalled that after the Belfast Agreement was signed in 1998 he hoped his baby son Andrew, now aged 11, would one day visit the Stormont Assembly at a time when the peace and politics were fully cemented.
With his wife Heather he also had an eight-year-old daughter Claire, and he still planned to honour that pledge by bringing his family to Stormont.
He made clear he would not be severing his links with Ireland and with his friends here.
Mr Mitchell welcomed the recent loyalist decommissioning and also looked forward to the devolution of policing and justice powers to the Northern Executive.
“I did not anticipate it would take so long and that there would be so many challenges and setbacks,” he said of the peace process generally. “But patience and perseverance, and most of all courage and vision on behalf of the political leaders and the people of Northern Ireland, in the end produced a good result.”
Among those who attended the function were former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, former SDLP leader John Hume, Gen John de Chastelain and Andrews Sens of the decommissioning body, and President Mary McAleese, who praised Mr Mitchell for his contribution to achieving peace in Northern Ireland.
The function, she said, was an opportunity to “say thank you for your faith in the capacity of the human person to change, for your patience and your persistence, for your unfailing serenity and good nature, for your investment in building peace the hard way, by persuasion, one person at a time”.
She added: “You got the most demanding job spec ever drafted on this island and today, as peace visibly consolidates, no one is more deserving of thanks, praise and respect.”