IT WAS a defining moment in the peace process. It was also the first time many people got a real clue as to what makes George Mitchell tick.
If politics is theatre, this was high drama. The setting was straight out of Cecil B. DeMille the National Building Museum in Washington DC is an epic structure with Romanesque pillars which rise hundreds of feet to the ceiling - not so much Oedipus Complex as Edifice Complex.
Amid the pillars sat the great and the good of Irish America. The great grandchildren of the Famine diaspora tucked into the beef and the fish. Their tuxedos and backless evening gowns were a long way from the brine soaked rags their ancestors wore as they landed off the coffin ships.
In the hall were ambassadors, senators, congressmen, corporate leaders and academics. "It's a good time to be interested in Ireland", Loretta Brennan Glucksmann, president of the American Ireland Fund, said from the stage. "Ireland is hot."
Television cameras prowled along the tables and there was a crisis at one point because they could not find David Trimble. But there he was, chatting to his party colleague, Jeffrey Donaldson, both Of them making a subtle cultural point by wearing tartan bow ties. Ken Maginnis was seated nearby John Hume was at a different table with his wife, Pat; the Sinn Fein chairman, Mitchel McLaughlin, sat with friends in another part of the room. Teddy Kennedy had dropped in for the reception; his sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, ambassador to Ireland, stayed for the meal, a prominent and honoured guest. The Minister for Equality and Law Reform, Mervyn Taylor, spoke on behalf of the Government.
Now in its fifth year, the gala dinner of
The American Ireland Fund has become an important social occasion which already ranks with the White House reception on St Patrick's Day and even the New York parade. But this time it turned into a major political event as well.
The Romanesque pillars formed an appropriate background to George Mitchell's words. The speech was Ciceronian simple, clear sentences, delivered in a speaking voice which was penetrating but not piercing. Here was genuine gravitas and solemnity a serious intervention on a life and death issue.
When the Stormont talks which he chairs were breaking up recently, reporters wondered yet again why this man who could be doing so many more pleasant, enjoyable and productive things in life had felt compelled to sit at a table for nine months listening to dreary re runs of the old Ulster quarrel.
Now he revealed to his audience that he had often asked himself the same question. The answer had more to do with America than with Ireland. Mitchell took us back to his days as a federal judge where, of all the powers he held, the one he enjoyed most was administering the oath of allegiance to the United States to would be citizens at naturalisation ceremonies.
It was always an emotional occasion for him because his mother was a Lebanese immigrant, his father the orphan son of immigrants from Ireland. "They had no education and they worked hard all their lives at difficult and low paying jobs."
But, because of their efforts "and, more importantly, because of the openness of American society", George Mitchell became majority leader of the US Senate. He recalled how one of his newly minted citizens, a young Asian, told him: "I came because here in America everybody has a chance." This summed up the meaning of America in a single sentence, Mitchell said. "Here, everybody has a chance."
Now he found himself in a position where he could "help others to have a chance". But for that to happen there had to be peace and reconciliation: "No one can really have a chance in a society dominated by fear, hatred and violence."
The Mitchell philosophy outlined in the speech was neither nationalist nor unionist, but humanist. The international statesman is motivated by his feelings of common humanity for the people on both sides in Northern Ireland, trapped in the vice of history.
But for Mitchell the Humanist to succeed he needs the aid of Mitchell the Exorcist. The former senator seeks to rid us of "the twin demons of Northern Ireland- violence and intransigence". These evil spirits "feed off each other in a deadly ritual in which most of the victims are innocent".
As he spoke, there was a definite sense that George Mitchell was getting feelings off his chest which had been welling up for nine months or even longer. He said that the twin demons did not want anything to change, ever they wanted to re create a past which could never happen again.
Intransigence was wrong, but violence was worse. Pointing with his finger, he called on the leaders of Irish America to condemn violence publicly, loudly, forcefully and repeatedly. There was a historic opportunity right now to end the conflict.
Everyone knew afterwards that a significant intervention had been made. The idle chatter of the reception beforehand gave way to a more subdued and solemn mood. Cling hips speech, George Mitchell told the guests it would be a wonderful thing if this time next year all of them were celebrating peace instead of just praying for it. It would be even more remarkable if the leaders were sitting around the same dinner table.