With President Barack Obama looking on, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton introduced former Senate majority leader George Mitchell to a State Department audience as Obama's new Middle East envoy on Thursday. Obama said at the news conference, "He will be fully empowered at the negotiating table and he will sustain our focus on the goal of peace."
Mitchell, whose 1998 "Good Friday Agreement" has lead to peace between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, says he saw during his work as envoy there that even a conflict that dates hundreds of years can be resolved. He acknowledged that he'll be facing a "volatile, complex and dangerous" conflict — one that has become so entrenched, it's seen by many as unchangeable. Mitchell was not successful in peacemaking efforts in 2001.
Mitchell is a Maronite Christian whose mother, Mary Saad, was a textile worker who immigrated to the United States from Lebanon at the age of eighteen.