Mitchell Reiss

Meghan O’Sullivan: “how do we make it possible for the others to deliver on the agreement? . . . I don’t know if there was enough of that in the room this time.”

Pete Baker on January 11, 2014, 4:58 pm | Readers 81

Whilst the Northern Ireland media continue to obsess over digest the parting shot from Richard Haass on the political parties’ failure to agree to his proposals (version 7), the co-chair of those talks, Meghan O’Sullivan, appears to have been delegated the task of addressing the media south of the border. [Partitionists! – Ed] ANYhoo.. In the Irish Times, Dan Keenan’s report includes what is, perhaps, the most revealing comment on the failure to agree. The final draft was written by herself and …

Mitchell Reiss: “Governments often have information about illegal activities that they decide not to prosecute…”

Pete Baker on December 16, 2010, 11:03 am | Readers 12

The Irish Echo reports comments from then-US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, on the Wikileaked US Embassy cables from 2005. From the Irish Echo report “I believe the taoiseach believed what he told me,” recalled Reiss in the interview. “This was the taoiseach speaking. The cable doesn’t give you my opinion. I certainly had no evidence whether these men were complicit or not. “Governments often have information about illegal activities that they decide not to prosecute for a …

Wikileaks: “What [Sinn Féin] cannot stand, he said, is skepticism.”

Pete Baker on December 13, 2010, 3:48 pm | Readers 60

The Guardian has a good round-up of most of the significant Process™ related sections of the US Embassy cables released by Wikileaks. But there are a few sections worth highlighting in that they corroborate elements of other accounts that have been published previously. In particular the account by Mary-Alice Clancy. From a US Embassy cable dated 04 February 2005 5. (C) XXXXXXXXXXXX said that the GOI’s approach to the peace process was to “sit tight” and let Sinn Fein find its way back. Equally, …

“One wonders whether Powell fully understands how revelatory his account really is…”

Mick Fealty on June 24, 2008, 8:06 pm | Readers 71

Mitchell Reiss comes to Jonathan Powell’s magnum opus on the peace process under the Blair regimine a little later than some others, but given he was a key player in the Bush administration for latter years of the process, he is, as one might expect, a good deal more critical that some the earlier entrants in the debate. Although there are echoes of Mandelson’s: “the Process is the bare minimum of the policy you need…” He doesn’t pull many punches. …