MITCHELL ROLE:ALL PARTIES to the Stormont talks believe that the setting of a deadline by Senator George Mitchell was pivotal in helping to secure an agreement on Good Friday. Senator Mitchell yesterday told a symposium organised to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement that a deadline was beneficial but denied he had imposed it.
"I had no authority to impose anything on anybody," he said. "Rather I spent four or five weeks going around the governments and each party trying to persuade them of the [ deadline concept]." Without it "I don't think the process would have done well," he said. "I was encouraged when they all said yes." Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said the deadline was appropriate as the talks process had been flitting between Ireland and London and was going nowhere.
John Hume said the concept of deadline was important but the idea that the outcome would be put to the people of Ireland North and South was of central importance.
This removed at a stroke any paramilitary claim that they spoke for the people of Ireland, he said. It also meant that people, and not politicians, would be the final arbiters of any accord.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said: "It was well worth putting in the intensive effort" to conclude talks which had been labouring for the previous seven months.
"Everyone [ at the talks] committed themselves to one hard intensive week. That was the deal everyone made." The then northern secretary, Paul Murphy, concurred, saying it was the deadline "which concentrated everybody's minds".
Liz O'Donnell, a former minister at the Department of Foreign Affairs, denied the Government delegation was at the Stormont multi-party talks solely to advance the wider nationalist position. However, she did accept that the two governments did, in some ways, mirror the wider unionist and nationalist concerns.
She accepted the Government was there to discuss altering Articles 2 and 3 of the constitution and was not prepared "to sell those cheaply".
The idea of a deadline was therefore important in helping to focus minds on achieving agreement. But she added that such was the scale of ambition of the talks, and such were the political and constitutional implications for both the Republic and the UK of a deal that talks participant had a sense of wanting to succeed.
Gerry Adams credited John Hume with helping to change the nature of the debate in Northern Ireland away from the security issue and towards a wider political agenda.
The Taoiseach revealed he was "not going to move on Articles 2 and 3 unless I had 'implementation bodies' " to ensure delivery of the terms of any deal. He said it was this which helped preserve the principle underscoring the North-South bodies which had been a sticking point in securing agreement with unionists.
Former foreign affairs minister David Andrews said the determination of the Taoiseach to attend the talks in the immediate aftermath of his mother's funeral and against the background of the Mitchell deadline had changed the atmosphere of the talks and helped to "lift the gloom" which had arisen out of a general fear of failure.
Bertie Ahern, asked how as Taoiseach and the son of a republican volunteer, he could come to the talks table "without any baggage" said it was the desire to find an accommodation that motivated him.
In pursuit of that single objective, "the chemistry built up over a period of time".
"What I brought to it was the same as everyone else, that the outcome would be an agreement for everybody."